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NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 


A  PEASANT  FAMILY  AND  THEIR  CABIN  ON  THE  SHORE  OF  ONE  OF  FINLAND'S 
INNUMERABLE  LAKES 


NEW   MASTERS 
OF   THE   BALTIC 


BY 

ARTHUR  RUHL 


NEW  YORK 

E.  P.  DUTTON  fcf  COMPANY 
681  FIFTH  AVENUE 


COPYRIGHT,    1921, 

BY  E.  P.  BUTTON  &  COMPANY 


All  Rights  Reserved 


Printed  In  the  United  States  of  America 


INTRODUCTION 

The  four  new  republics  on  the  eastern  Baltic — 
Finland,  Esthonia,  Latvia  and  Lithuania — owe  their 
independence  to  the  World  War  and  the  Russian  revo- 
lution. The  breaking  of  the  political  tie  with  old 
Russia,  which  resulted  almost  automatically  from  the 
Bolshevik  revolution,  was  followed,  however,  in  each 
case,  by  a  bitter  internal  struggle — a  more  or  less 
clearly  defined  social  revolution — for  which  their 
curious  social  and  economic  make-up  had  long  been 
preparing  them. 

This  curious  social  arrangement,  and  the  tragic 
drama  growing  out  of  it,  was  similar  in  all  four  coun- 
tries, different  as  they  are  in  relative  development  and 
local  scene.  The  characters  and  "lines"  were  unlike, 
but  the  plot,  so  to  speak,  was  the  same. 

Each,  as  a  more  or  less  forcibly  held  province  of 
old  Russia,  was  subject  in  the  old  days  to  an  external 
political  rule.  Internally,  each  was  dominated  socially 
and,  to  a  certain  extent,  economically,  by  an  aristocratic 
minority  which  was  neither  Russian  nor  "native." 
The  Swedes,  or  Swede-Finns,  made  up  this  minority 
in  Finland;  the  Germanic  Bait  Barons  in  Esthonia  and 
Latvia;  in  Lithuania  it  was  the  estate-owning  Poles 
or  Polonized-Lithuanians.  In  each,  the  under-dog 
"native"  majority,  serfs  originally  (except  in  Finland, 
where  they  were  peasants),  of  late  years  peasants, 
with  a  gradually  increasing  middle-class,  and  now  come 


Yi  INTRODUCTION 

into  their  own,  are  more  or  less  ruthlessly  pushing  aside 
the  old  aristocracy  and  making  themselves  masters  in 
what  they  regard  as  their  own  house. 

In  Finland,  modern  and  partially  industrialized,  this 
internal  struggle  took  the  form  of  a  clearly  defined 
class-war — a  Red  revolution  and  a  White  counter- 
revolution— and  the  subsequent  adjustment  (still  in 
process)  to  a  settled  republican  regime.  Finland 
shows  in  miniature  and  with  the  cycle  completed — and 
this  makes  it  politically  so  interesting  and  significant 
— what  happened,  and  might  yet  happen,  on  a  vaster 
scale,  in  Great  Russia  itself. 

In  Esthonia  and  Latvia,  both  less  politically  de» 
veloped,  the  social  revolution  took  the  less  definite 
form  of  a  seizing  and  parcelling  of  the  nobles'  estates. 
A  landed  aristocracy,  for  centuries  secure,  is  now  being 
brushed  aside  under  the  mask  of  a  theoretically  legal 
agrarian  reform.  In  Lithuania,  still  less  developed, 
the  phenomena  are  similar,  although  the  action  moves 
more  slowly  owing  to  local  differences  which  will  later 
be  explained. 

Overshadowed  by  the  Russia  and  Germany  on  either 
side  of  them,  these  border  states,  before  the  war,  were 
little  noticed  in  the  West.  Travelers  hurried  through 
them,  so  to  speak,  as  Mr.  Tarkington  once  complained 
they  hurried  through  his  beloved  Indiana,  with  heads 
in  novels  or  Baedekers,  their  Pullman  curtains  drawn. 

Finland,  to  be  sure,  because  of  her  sturdy  fight  for 
home-rule,  had  attracted  a  certain  esoteric  Western 
sympathy.  University  professors  signed  petitions, 
editors  wrote  bitterly.  The  Romanoff  dynasty  was  an 
ogre  at  whom  all  liberals  were  privileged  to  heave 


INTRODUCTION  vii 

bricks,  and  little  Finland — "just  like  ourselves" — a 
brave  Jack-the-Giant-Killer,  about  whom  superior 
people,  untroubled  as  yet  by  such  phrases  as  "bour- 
geois" and  "proletarian,"  could  indulge  their  taste  for 
long-distance  altruism.  Most  Americans,  however, 
thought  of  Finland,  when  they  thought  of  it  at  all,  as 
a  half-Arctic  wilderness.  They  saw  reindeer  and  ice 
instead  of  unspoiled  lakes,  round  granite  rocks  and 
birch  trees,  where  even  Russians  flocked  to  spend  their 
summers,  and  they  little  recked  of  white-night  enchant- 
ments, and  still  less,  perhaps,  of  woman  suffrage,  co- 
operatives and  socialism,  and  a  capital  city  cleaner  and 
more  consistently  well-built  than  any  of  their  own. 

Esthonia  and  Latvia,  across  the  Gulf  to  the  south 
(they  were  then  the  Baltic  provinces  of  Esthonia, 
Livonia  and  Courland)  were  even  less  known.  West- 
ern tourists  rarely  got  so  far  from  home  as  Reval  and 
Riga,  although  these  ancient  Hansa  towns  had  been 
looking  out  on  the  gray  Baltic  for  seven  hundred  years. 
The  manor-house  life  of  the  Esthonian  and  Livonian 
countryside  might,  so  far  as  most  Westerners  were 
concerned,  have  been  buried  in  the  eighteenth  century 
from  which  it  had,  in  many  ways,  scarcely  departed. 
These  Bait  barons  and  baronesses,  although  they  read 
the  books  and  reviews  of  Berlin,  London  and  Paris, 
and  spent  their  winters  in  Petrograd;  old  Reval  itself 
— town  and  country  both — were,  indeed,  a  bit  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  forgotten  here  behind  the  peninsula 
which  shut  off  the  eastern  Baltic  into  almost  an  inland 
lake. 

As  for  Lithuania,  it  was  but  a  vague,  east-European 
region,  whence  came  cannon-fodder  for  the  industrial 


viii  INTRODUCTION 

battles  of  steel-mills  and  packing  houses,  or,  to  the  very 
few,  a  place  where  somebody's  titled  Polish  husband 
was  said  to  have  his  estates. 

The  War  lighted  up  this  obscurity  and  the  peace 
changed  it  completely.  Allied  Missions,  mainly  intent 
at  the  moment  on  drawing  what  was  described  as  a 
sanitary  cordon  around  Bolshevik  Russia,  established 
themselves  in  Helsingfors,  Reval,  Riga  and  Kovno. 
American  food  ships  began  to  poke  into  the  eastern 
Baltic  all  the  way  up  to  Viborg  and  almost  within  sight 
of  Petrograd,  and  American  flour,  bacon  and  beans 
were  carried  even  to  the  northern  Finnish  forests. 
Relief  workers  of  various  sorts — A.  R.  A.,  Red  Cross, 
Y.  M.  C.  A. — spread  through  the  provinces  and  began 
to  feel  at  home  in  such  unfamiliar  places  as  Pskov, 
Walk,  or  Narva,  while  Esthonian  and  Lettish  boys 
began  to  study  English  and  the  game  of  baseball. 
Newspaper  correspondents  followed  —  when  Litvinov 
came  out  of  the  mystery  of  Bolshevik  Russia  in  the 
early  winter  of  1919,  to  start  the  first  talk  of  peace 
with  the  border  states,  a  flock  of  these  nervous  scouts 
descended  on  Dorpat,  and  that  old  university  town, 
which  the  Baits  were  sometimes  pleased  to  call  the 
"Baltic  Heidelberg,"  got  into  the  western  news. 

Finland,  having  weathered  a  Red  revolution,  a  White 
military  dictatorship,  elected  a  middle-ground  President 
and  kept  its  trade  and  industry  going,  seems  now  defi- 
nitely to  have  established  its  independence,  and  taken 
its  natural  place  alongside  its  sister  Scandinavian  states. 
It  is  hard  to  picture  the  Finns  ever  again  bowing  their 
square  heads  to  the  Moscovite.  Even  the  United 
States,  with  its  apparent  policy  of  preserving  the  terri- 


INTRODUCTION  ix 

torial  integrity  of  Russia,  has  recognised  Finland  and 
has  its  Legation  and  Consulates  there. 

Esthonia  and  Latvia  have  been  recognised  de  jure 
by  all  the  Allies  with  the  exception  of  the  United 
States;  Lithuania  has  received  de  facto  recognition 
from  Britain  and  France  and  de  jure  recognition  from 
several  neutral  countries.  The  future  of  these  latter 
three  states,  set  squarely  as  they  are  on  Russia's  road 
to  the  Baltic,  and  possessing  several  of  old  Russia's 
principal  ports,  is  less  certain  than  that  of  Finland. 
But  whether  or  not  they  retain  complete  independence, 
or  accept  at  some  future  time  autonomy  within  a  great 
Russia,  they  can  never  return  to  their  position  before 
the  war. 

The  spell  of  the  old  political  and  social  orders,  how- 
ever they  may  be  patched  up  again,  is  broken.  These 
new  states  fought  for  their  independence,  organized 
armies  in  the  face  of  every  sort  of  economic  difficulty 
and  drove  the  Russian  Bolsheviks  beyond  their  borders. 
They  elected  national  assemblies,  called  back  their 
intelligentsia  from  the  ends  of  the  earth  and  established 
governments  which  work.  They  are  marching  to  new 
tunes  now,  and  singing  new  national  songs,  and  have 
even  begun  to  celebrate  the  anniversaries  of  their  inde- 
pendence. Real  people  are  doing  these  things.  The 
hot,  intemperate  enthusiasm  of  these  new  masters,  the 
dismay  and  despair  of  the  old;  political  realities  des- 
tined to  become  more  and  more  serious  as  Russia  and 
Germany  regain  their  strength,  lie  underneath  what  to 
most  Westerners  are  mere  names. 

It  is  impossible  to  speak  with  finality  of  the  future 
of  these  new  republics,  with  Russia  and  Germany 


x  INTRODUCTION 

momentarily  helpless  and  all  Eastern  Europe  more  or 
less  broken.  With  their  separation  from  Russia,  how- 
ever, the  coming  into  power  of  the  native  majority 
and  the  recognition  of  their  independence,  an  historical 
epoch  has  been  completed,  and  one  may  speak  with  a 
certain  finality  of  that.  It  is  the  main  steps  in  this 
transition  period  which  are  to  be  traced  here,  and  as 
an  eye  witness  of  some  of  them  I  shall  supplement  this 
brief  excursion  into  recent  history  with  more  detailed 
impressions  of  the  peoples  themselves  and  the  more 

permanent  aspects  of  their  local  scenes. 

A.  R. 
New  York,  October,  1921. 


CONTENTS 
FINLAND 

CHAPTM  PAGE 

I.    RUSSIA'S    IRELAND ,     .  i 

II.    RED  TERROR  AND  WHITE 21 

The  Red  Revolt 24 

Counter-Revolution       .     > 33 

III.  FIRST  AID 46 

Trade  and  Forest  Wealth 55 

ESTHONIA 

IV.  THE  ESTHONIAN  WORM  TURNS  ....  60 

Launching  the  New  State 63 

Types  from  Both  Camps 72 

V.    WAR  AND  PEACE  WITH  THE  BOLSHEVIKS    .     .  85 

The  White  Drive  on  Petrograd  ....  90 

In  Sight  of  St.  Isaac's 100 

The  Bolsheviks'  First  Bridge  to  the  West     .  115 

VI.    REALITIES  OF  LAND  "REFORM" 123 

On  an  Esthonian  Estate 127 

Revolution  by  Act  of  Parliament  .     .     .     .  137 

LATVIA 

VII.    LATVIA  AND  THE  LETTS  .......  149 

Lettish    Intelligentsia 155 

The  Tragedy  of  Riga 162 

xi 


xii  CONTENTS 


PACE 


Trade  and  the  New  Order 168 

Peasants  and  the  Land 174 

VIII.     BALT  TWILIGHT 182 

LITHUANIA 

IX.    THE  CASE  OF  LITHUANIA 194 

America  and  the  Post-Pioneers     ....  203 

The  Land  and  Foreign  Trade     .      .      .      .  211 

The  Lithuanian  Zion 220 

X.    IN  THE  REAL  LITHUANIA 231 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

A  Finnish  Peasant  Family  and  Their  Cabin  .      .    Frontispiece 

FACING 
PAGE 

General    Mannerheim,    Regent  of   Finland    Before   the 

Election  of  the  First  President 28 

Dr.  Grenius,  Prime  Minister  of  Lithuania    ....  28 

The  Rapids  of  Imatra,  on  the  Vuoxen,  Finland  ...  32 

Reval's  "Long  Street,"   Showing  American  Red  Cross 

Headquarters 32 

A  View  of  Old  Reval  from  the  Sea 62 

Early  Winter  in  Reval 62 

Belakhovitch,  a  Russian  Guerilla  Leader 92 

Peasant   Refugees   Shuffling  Through  Jamburg  Driving 

Their  Pigs  and  Cattle  Before  Them      ....  92 

The  Ancient  House  of  the  "Black  Head  Club"  in  Reval  124 

The  Old  Town  Hall  in  Reval 124 

Railroad  Station  at   Helsingfors 160 

The  "Schwarz-Haupterplatz"  in  the  "Old  Town"   at 

Riga 160 

Market  on  the  Quay  at  Helsingfors 232 

Peasants  Coming  from  Church  at  Mariampole  .      .      .  232 


NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 


AKCT/C     OCfA/f 


AfCT/C     OCEAN 


NEW  MASTERS 
OF  THE   BALTIC 

CHAPTER  I 

RUSSIA'S  IRELAND 

THE  Finnish  frontier  is  only  about  thirty  miles 
from  Petrograd,  but  in  the  old  Russian  days  of  1917, 
Finland  really  began  before  that.  One  stepped  into 
Finland  at  the  Petrograd  station,  when,  after  swal- 
lowing a  final  glass  of  Russian  tea  in  the  musty  buffet, 
one  stepped  into  the  little  Finnish  train  and  saw  its 
trim  Finnish  stewardess. 

She  was  Lutheran  Protestant  instead  of  Greek 
Catholic,  and  belonged,  one  somehow  felt  at  once,  to 
the  West  instead  of  Asia.  And  the  mere  way  in  which 
she  made  up  a  berth,  and,  by  some  deft  and  hygienic 
sleight  of  hand,  whisked  a  blanket  inside  its  baglike 
sheet,  showed  that  she  would  fit  into  Stockholm,  or 
Copenhagen,  or  the  Hague,  among  people  who  save 
their  pennies  and  keep  their  door-knobs  shining. 

She  was  as  different  as  could  be  from  Russia  and 
yet  here  she  was  in  Petrograd  and  apparently  as  much 
a  part  of  the  Russian  scheme  of  things  as  the  jovial 
old  bearded  isvoschick  outside  the  station,  who  came, 
perhaps,  from  Moscow  or  Nizhni-Novgorod.  And 

1 


there  was  suggested  the  whole  problem  of  the  Finns 
and  their  independence  as  it  used  to  be — their  close- 
.  ness  to  Russia  and  their  difference  from  it,  their  nat- 
ural wish  to  be  free  and  the  practical  objections  to 
granting  that  freedom. 

You  had  scarcely  settled  down  in  your  apartment 
when  along  came  the  frontier  and  you  had  to  tumble 
out,  have  your  baggage  examined,  and  tell  the  story  of 
your  life  all  over  again.  For  the  traveller  this  was 
merely  bothersome,  but  Russians  took  it  more  seri- 
ously because  the  distance  was  just  about  what  an 
invading  army  could  march  over  in  a  day. 

To  be  sure,  Holland  and  Denmark  were  little  inde- 
pendent nations  smaller  than  Finland,  and  in  a  similar 
position  to  a  large  one.  Geographically,  Denmark  is 
but  a  peninsula  reaching  out  into  the  ocean  from  Ger- 
many, and  on  paper  there  may  have  been  as  much 
reason  for  England's  invading  Germany  through  Den- 
mark as  for  Germany's  invading  Russia  through  Fin- 
land. The  argument  against  Finnish  independence  on 
this  ground  was  not  unanswerable,  but  it  was  an  argu- 
ment, nevertheless. 

Well,  one  crossed  the  frontier,  hurried  past  lakes 
and  rocks  and  white  birch  trees,  and  presently  came 
to  a  station  lunch  room.  On  the  other  side  of  Petro- 
grad  everybody  would  be  drinking  very  hot  and  very 
weak  tea  out  of  glasses;  here,  for  some  unexplainable 
racial  reason,  they  all  drank  coffee  out  of  cups.  The 
smell  of  it  was  in  the  air,  and  there  was  something 
in  that  sharp,  pungent  odor  which  set  up  a  new  train 
of  thought.  The  cups  and  counter  were  clean  as  a 
whistle,  and  the  pink-cheeked  girls  serving  coffee  had 


RUSSIA'S  IRELAND  5 

a  certain  prim,  hardy,  slightly  stubborn  air,  different 
from  the  easy-going,  "broad-natured"  Slavs — some- 
thing that  goes  with  sharp  church  spires  rather  than 
little  gilded  domes — something  of  the  "earnest  of  the 
north  wind." 

As  for  the  north,  they  were,  indeed,  true  children  of 
it.  The  south  of  Finland  is  in  the  same  latitude  as  the 
lower  end  of  Greenland,  and  the  country  extends  north- 
ward, well  beyond  the  Arctic  Circle.  It  is  a  hard,  bare 
— though  beautiful — land  where  only  a  thrifty,  hard- 
working people  could  make  a  living  at  all;  and  the 
Finns  have  not  only  made  a  living,  but  built  cities 
and  a  civilization  which  compare  favorably  with  those 
of  other  little  nations. 

Their  capital,  Helsingfors,  a  city  of  about  a  quar- 
ter of  a  million  people  lying  by  the  sea,  is  a  model  of 
good  building  and  cleanliness.  There  are  no  shabby 
backyards  or  areaways — they  are  all  covered  with 
brick  or  concrete.  Their  gas-tanks  are  hidden  in  brick 
roundhouses  of  pleasing  design  which  vaguely  remind 
one  of  Castle  Angelo  at  Rome.  Bills  are  not  pasted 
on  lamp-posts  or  trees,  but  tied  on  with  a  string  and 
when  they  have  served  their  purpose  both  bills  and 
string  disappear. 

When  I  first  saw  these  bills  with  their  circumspect 
strings  around  their  waists,  I  recalled  a  good-natured 
old  bear  of  a  baggage-room  attendant  at  one  of  the 
stations  in  southwest  Russia  a  few  weeks  before.  I 
had  given  him  a  suitcase  and  overcoat  to  check.  The 
old  fellow  daubed  a  label  with  paste  and  slapped  it 
on  the  suitcase,  then  daubed  another  and  slapped  it 
on  the  coat.  He  was  dumfounded  at  my  howls  of 


4  NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

protest.  Pins,  or  tags  on  a  string,  had  never  occurred 
to  him,  apparently,  and  he  finally  ended  by  hanging 
the  coat  up  and  pasting  a  label  on  the  hook! 

As  I  walked  through  some  of  the  residence  streets 
that  first  evening,  past  brightly  lighted  windows  with 
shades  up,  I  was  reminded  of  some  of  our  Middle- 
Western  towns  where  it  used  to  be  considered  rather 
fashionable  to  have  big  plate-glass  windows  behind 
which  the  whole  family  could  be  seen  reading  maga- 
zines, or  playing  the  piano,  round  the  evening  lamp. 
Here  in  Helsingfors  one  saw  just  that,  and  could  fancy 
that  the  reading  resembled  our  own  and  that  these 
households  might  be  interested  in  the  "House  Beauti- 
ful" and  advertisements  of  automobiles  and  cameras 
and  patent  things  to  eat.  That  picturesque  "humanity" 
often  found  in  Russia,  made  up  of  crowded  rooms  full 
of  smoke  and  talk  and  the  reek  of  human  breaths, 
and  a  good-natured  indifference  to  the  morrow,  had 
given  way  to  something  different  and  more  up  to  date, 
so  to  speak,  at  once  superficially  brighter  and  morally 
more  austere. 

In  old  Russia  people  lived,  as  a  rule,  rather  spa- 
ciously or  rather  crudely.  There  were  expensive  hotels 
and  there  were  stuffy,  dirty  traktirs,  but  little  in  be- 
tween. One  did  not  find  in  Russia  the  places  found  at 
every  step  in  modern  Western  cities,  where  one  can 
drop  in  on  the  run  for  something  to  eat  or  drink,  neatly 
and  attractively  served.  In  tramps  across  Petrograd's 
endless  distances,  there  were  among  the  unexpected 
things  one  missed  most.  Here  in  Helsingfors — and 
in  1917  this  was  still  Russia — these  once-despised  con- 
veniences were  found  again.  And  it  would  be  difficult, 


RUSSIA'S  IRELAND  5 

perhaps,  to  explain  to  Americans,  spoiled  as  we  all 
are  by  mechanical  comforts,  with  what  almost  infantile 
delight  one  hailed  the  Helsingfors  "automats."  To 
drop  into  these  warm,  clean,  brightly-lighted  rooms, 
where  cheery  girls  in  white  were  serving,  drop  a  coin 
in  a  slot,  have  something  revolve  and  deliver  you  forth- 
with coffee,  cream  and  sugar  on  a  shiny  metal  tray, — 
this,  after  the  black  bread  and  tea  and  dirt  which  one 
would  have  found  in  a  corresponding  place  in  Petro- 
grad,  gave  one  a  most  amusing  sense  of  beating  th£ 
game  and  getting  more  than  one  deserved.  One  went 
about  nibbling  here  and  there  as  a  child  in  a  dream 
nibbles  from  a  castle  made  of  chocolate. 

Adventures  with  people  were  similarly  refreshing. 
I  went  into  a  bank  to  cash  a  letter  of  credit — a  per- 
formance that  consumed  the  better  part  of  an  hour  in 
Petrograd — and  had  just  sat  down  to  read,  according 
to  custom,  when  there  was  the  clerk  beckoning  from 
the  counter  with  the  money,  and  a  quick  Swedish 
"TakI"  for  thanks.  At  Ellen  Key's,  in  Sweden,  the 
year  before,  I  had  met  Annie  Furuhjelm,  a  well-known 
Finnish  suffragist  and  a  member  of  the  Finnish  Diet. 
Although  I  had  got  into  the  habit  of  expecting  things 
which  should  take  minutes  to  take  days  or  weeks, 
nevertheless,  as  soon  as  I  reached  my  hotel,  I  tele- 
phoned to  see  if  Miss  Furuhjelm  were  in  Helsingfors, 
and  when  I  might  call.  She  was  there,  right  enough, 
but  explained  that  I  had  arrived  on  election  day,  and 
that  she  would  be  busy  until  evening,  but  would  try, 
meanwhile,  to  find  someone  to  show  me  round. 

A  moment  later  she  telephoned  again  that  if  I  would 
be  at  their  party  headquarters  at  eleven  o'clock,  their 


6  NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

campaign  manager,  a  young  banker,  would  be  pleased 
to  act  as  guide.  I  went  to  their  headquarters  and  the 
amateur  "boss"  greeted  me  heartily  and  started  in  to 
explain  things.  He  said  that  all  the  parties  of  the 
Right  and  Middle  had  combined  to  beat  out  the  Social- 
ist ;  spread  out  the  big  ballot — voting  was  on  the  pro- 
portional system — and  explained  how  it  worked;  and 
then  we  hurried  out  to  see  the  town  and  some  of  the 
polling  places. 

We  climbed  a  hill  and  looked  down  on  the  harbor 
and  the  Russian  dreadnoughts,  which  had  been  collect- 
ing barnacles  there  since  the  beginning  of  the  war, 
and  then  went  to  see  the  voting.  The  polling  booths 
were  in  clubrooms,  schools  and  such  places,  and  with 
their  white-haired  old  ladies,  and  nice-looking  young 
ones  standing  in  line  with  the  men,  very  dignified  in- 
deed. We  went  to  the  other  side  of  the  town  to  a  fac- 
tory district,  where  there  were  lines  of  people  waiting 
to  vote,  a  block  long,  and  scooted  through  the  People's 
Palace,  a  big  building  run  by  Socialists  (it  was  to  be 
badly  damaged  by  White  shells  a  few  months  later) 
with  club  and  lecture  rooms  and  a  hall  to  dance  in, 
and  a  big  restaurant  where  food  was  served  at  moder- 
ate prices.  All  the  time  he  was  explaining  things,  and 
when  he  left  me,  after  four  hours,  to  return  to  his  own 
work,  I  knew  as  much  about  things  in  Helsingfors,  as, 
under  similar  circumstances  in  Russia,  I  might  have 
known  in  a  month. 

But  quick  lunches  and  promptitude  are  unimportant, 
perhaps,  except  to  a  homesick  American.  The  Finns 
have  other  things.  They  were  the  first  people  to  grant 
women  the  vote — everybody  over  twenty-four  votes 


RUSSIA'S  IRELAND  T 

in  Finland,  and  women  are  eligible  to  the  Diet.  There 
is  a  University  in  Helsingfors,  moved  here  in  1827 
from  the  old  capital,  Abo,  and  various  scientific  socie- 
ties whose  publications  circulate  far  beyond  Finland. 
In  their  past  history,  ethnology,  archeology  and  folk- 
lore, the  Finns  have  made  painstaking  and  thorough 
researches.  There  are  contemporary  poets  and  novel- 
ists, whose  work,  if  not  of  the  first  importance,  is 
interesting,  sincere  and  characteristic.  The  mournful 
beauty  of  Jean  Sibelius's  music  is  known  everwhere. 

THE  Finns,  themselves,  as  distinguished  from  the 
Swedish-Finlanders,  are,  like  the  Esthonians  just  across 
the  Gulf,  often  said  to  be  of  "Mongolian"  stock.  This, 
very  likely,  is  inaccurate,  but  at  any  rate  their  language 
belongs  to  the  Ural-Altaic  group  of  languages,  to 
which  Esthonian,  Mongol,  Magyar  and  Turkish  also 
belong.  They  were  conquered  by  the  Swedes  in  the 
1 2th  century,  and  the  country  belonged  to  Sweden  until 
1809  when  it  was  re-conquered  by  the  Russians.  The 
Swedes  were  the  people  of  consequence  then,  the  official 
language  was  Swedish,  and  nobody  paid  much  atten- 
tion to  the  more  or  less  submerged  "natives"  and  their 
musical  but  very  difficult  speech.  The  Finns  are  a 
hard-fisted  people,  however,  they  were  much  in  the 
majority,  and  when,  in  1835,  Prof.  Lonnrot  published 
his  monumental  collection  of  folk-songs  as  the  Finnish 
epic,  "Kalevala,"  the  Finnish  national  revival  began. 

The  Fennomans — the  Finnish  name  for  Finland  is 
"Suomi" — kept  pushing,  until  Finnish  was  permitted 
in  official  communications  and  used  as  an  alternate 
language  in  Helsingfors  University.  A  Finnish  the- 


8 

atre  was  built  where  nothing  but  Finnish  was  spoken 
and  when  the  war  started,  274  out  of  the  384  news- 
papers in  Finland  were  printed  in  Finnish.  The 
Finns  made  nearly  3,000,000  of  the  3,500,000  popu- 
lation, and  although  the  Swedish  landed-gentry  still 
survived  and  the  Swedish-Finlanders  held  a  position 
in  society  and  affairs  to  which  their  greater  sophisti- 
cation and  experience  entitled  them,  "Finland  for  the 
Finns"  became  more  and  more  a  fact. 

When  Russia  annexed  the  province,  the  Finns — all 
Swedish  subjects  then,  of  course — were  promised  by 
Tsar  Alexander  I  that  they  were  to  retain  their  con- 
stitution and  "fundamental  rights"  and  be  attached  to 
the  Empire  as  a  semi-independent  Grand  Duchy  with 
the  Tsar  as  Grand  Duke.  They  had  their  own  army, 
with  Finnish  officers,  and  except  in  international 
affairs,  were  almost  free. 

The  existence  of  such  a  province,  in  such  a  place, 
with  a  different  language  and  religion,  was  naturally 
a  red  rag  to  the  Pan-Slavs,  and  after  various  clashes, 
Nicholas  II,  in  the  late  nineties,  started  a  definite  policy 
of  repression.  He  reserved  to  himself  the  right  to 
decide  what  were  local  and  what  imperial  questions, 
and  in  1903,  General  Bobrikov,  whom  present-day 
Finns  look  back  to  as  the  very  devil  himself,  assumed 
almost  dictatorial  powers.  Conscription  was  intro- 
duced, and  the  good  old-fashioned  reactionary  pro- 
gram began — spies,  searching  of  houses,  shutting  up  of 
newspapers,  banishment,  and  so  on. 

The  Finns  put  on  black  to  mourn  their  lost  liberties, 
they  crossed  to  the  other  side  of  the  street  when  they 
saw  Bobrikov  coming  and  finally  in  June,  1904,  a  young 


RUSSIA'S  IRELAND  9 

educated  Finn,  Eugene  Schaumann,  shot  and  killed  the 
Governor.  The  tragedy  was  planned  with  peculiar 
seriousness,  and  for  months  before  the  young  man 
lived  as  a  sort  of  hermit  so  that  none  but  himself  might 
be  connected  with  the  crime. 

When  the  great  national  strike  of  1905,  with  which 
the  Russians  forced  the  Tsar  to  grant  a  Constitution 
and  a  Duma,  shook  the  foundations  of  the  empire  and 
started  fires  of  revolt  in  all  this  Russian  border  world, 
the  Finns  also  struck.  The  Russian  Government  hur- 
riedly withdrew  its  more  objectionable  measures;  the 
Finns  were  again  exempted  from  conscription  and  per- 
mitted to  pay  an  annual  contribution  instead,  and  finally 
the  old-fashioned  Diet,  with  its  four  estates — nobles, 
clergy,  burghers  and  peasants — was  changed  to  a 
one-chamber  Parliament  with  200  delegates  to  be 
chosen  by  direct  and  proportional  election. 

Relations  did  not,  however,  improve.  With  the 
suppression  of  the  revolution  of  1905,  the  policy  of 
Russification  began  again.  The  introduction  of  con- 
stitutional government  in  Russia  itself  had  also  com- 
plicated things.  The  Finns  claimed  that  the  Tsar  had 
not  turned  over  his  powers  in  Finland  to  the  new  Duma 
and  Imperial  Council.  The  Russians  claimed  that  he 
had.  Laws  were  passed  affecting  such  matters  as  taxes, 
police,  schools  and  control  of  the  press,  which  the 
Finnish  Diet  refused  to  recognize  and  some  Finnish 
judges  declared  illegal. 

While  Finland  was  thus  drifting  rapidly  toward  the 
demand  for  complete  independence,  the  line  between 
Red  and  White  in  Finland  itself  was  become  more 
sharply  defined.  The  growth  of  industrialism  in  a 


10 

land  originally  almost  wholly  agricultural — and  it  was 
rapid  in  the  next  decade — brought  with  it  the  usual  con- 
flicts between  labor  and  capital.  The  war  brought 
great  material  prosperity  to  some,  for  the  Russians, 
shut  off  from  the  West,  gladly  took  everything  the 
Finns  could  sell  them,  and  increased  these  differences. 

The  Socialists,  who  had  more  to  do  than  many  re- 
alize with  forcing  the  reforms  in  the  Diet  and  other 
legislation  following  the  general  strike,  grew  amaz- 
ingly, and  in  the  elections  held  in  1916  for  the  Diet 
returned  103  out  of  200  members.  The  leader  of 
this  majority  was  Senator  Tokoi,  a  workingman  who 
had  gone  to  America  as  an  immigrant,  worked  in  the 
mines  of  Colorado  and  California,  and  come  back  to 
be  the  man  of  the  hour,  in  a  way,  in  his  home  land. 

Late  on  that  afternoon  of  my  arrival,  as  I  was 
crossing  the  Esplanade,  a  brass  band  came  up  the 
street  banging  out  the  "Marseillaise."  Behind  the 
band  marched  a  crowd  of  men  and  women  under  red 
banners  like  those  we  were  used  to  in  Petrograd,  except 
that  they  carried  in  Finnish  the  legend,  "All  Power  to 
the  People,"  instead  of  the  Russian,  "All  Power  to  the 
Soviets."  They  were  on  their  way  to  a  park  on  the 
edge  of  town,  where  they  were  going  to  make  speeches 
and  set  off  fireworks  in  the  frosty  northern  twilight. 

I  tramped  along  with  them  out  to  a  natural  amphi- 
theatre, fenced  in  by  big  gray  boulders  and  white  birch 
trees,  and  already  filled  with  delegations  from  other 
sections  of  the  city,  each  grouped  under  its  red  ban- 
ners. There  were  speeches,  and  in  between,  the  Rus- 
sian soldier  and  sailor  bands  played,  and  the  crowd 
listened  with  stolid  approval — solid,  broad-faced,  thick- 


RUSSIA'S  IRELAND  11 

necked  men  in  black  overcoats  and  derbies,  with  red 
sashes,  quaintly  wild,  looped  across  their  chests.  There 
was  something  unexpected  and  almost  incongruous 
about  socialism  away  up  here  in  the  unsociable  cold, 
about  the  "Marsellaise"  and  the  red  sashes,  against 
those  granite  rocks  and  white  birches,  and  one  thought 
of  the  many  strange  things  afoot,  and  of  America 
away  off  there  below  the  horizon  on  the  other  side 
of  the  earth,  and  how  really  prim  and  staid,  and  in 
some  ways  almost  antique,  we  were  in  spite  of  our 
slot  machines  and  hurry  and  skyscrapers. 

The  Diet  had  passed  a  few  weeks  before  a  new  Con- 
stitution which  they  had  declined  to  submit  to  the  Ker- 
ensky  Government  for  approval.  When  Petrograd 
replied  by  dissolving  the  Diet  and  sealing  up  the  par- 
liamentary doors,  the  members  went  on  meeting  in 
another  building. 

All  Finlanders  wanted  independence,  and  were  more 
or  less  anti-Russian  in  consequence,  but  this  feeling 
against  Russia  was  tempered  in  the  case  of  the  radicals, 
most  of  whom  were  Finns,  by  sympathy  for  their  pro- 
letarian brothers  across  the  border;  and  in  the  case 
of  the  conservatives,  mostly  Swedish-Finlanders,  it 
was  sharpened  by  fear.  The  curious  result  was  that 
the  more  conservative  the  Finn  the  more  violent  was 
apt  to  be  his  opposition  to  Russian  rule,  and  the  more 
violent  his  domestic  policies  the  more  conservative  was 
he  likely  to  be  toward  Petrograd. 

Underneath  the  surface  neatness  and  thrift  of  which 
I  have  spoken,  conditions  in  that  late  autumn  of  1917 
were  very  similar  to  those  in  Russia  itself.  Red  Finns 


12  NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

had  already  sided  with  the  revolting  Russian  garrison 
in  Sveaborg  fortress  in  the  harbor  of  Helsingfors  in 
1906;  the  murder  of  a  score  of  Russian  officers  at 
Viborg  when  the  revolution  broke  out  in  the  spring 
of  1917,  had  been  partly  brought  about,  it  was  said,  by 
Finnish  agitators.  The  lack  of  food  (the  Finns  had 
paid  40,000,000  marks  to  the  Kerensky  Government 
for  grain  that  had  never  been  delivered)  and  the  re- 
quisitioning of  fodder  by  the  Russians  had  forced  them 
largely  to  kill  their  dairy  cattle ;  the  herds  of  idle  Rus- 
sian soldiers  and  sailors;  the  robberies  and  killings 
were  Russia  repeated,  with  this  difference — the  Finns 
were  not  Russians.  The  bourgeois  Swede-Finns,  par- 
ticularly, looked  on  the  idle  soldiery  almost  as  an  in- 
vading army,  and  felt  as  Californians  might  feel  if 
they  were  annexed  by  Mexico  and  forced  to  see  their 
towns  overrun  by  Villa's  soldiers  and  to  wait  for  orders 
from  some  uncertain  authority  holding  the  stage  for 
a  moment  in  Mexico  City. 

The  amateur  "boss"  saw  red  as  he  talked  of  these 
things — indeed,  he  literally  got  red  to  the  tips  of  his 
ears.  If,  he  said,  he  seemed  cool  toward  England  and 
warm  toward  Germany,  it  was  only  because  England 
was  Russia's  ally  and  they  never  could  expect  help 
from  there.  I  reminded  him  of  the  general  sympathy 
for  Finland  in  the  West  and  the  many  friendly  things 
said  and  written  about  them  in  England,  France  and 
America. 

"Sympathy — yes!"  he  snorted,  "But  what  do  they 
do?  We  know  we've  got  one  friend!" 

The  tragedy  in  the  air,  actual  and  impending;  the 
apparent  willingness  of  the  Socialistic  majority  to 


RUSSIA'S  IRELAND  IS 

jam  their  measures  through  almost  at  the  point  of 
Russian  bayonets;  the  helplessness  of  the  more  conser- 
vative elements  before  the  gathering  storm,  had  united 
the  parties  of  Middle  and  Right  in  this  attempt — which 
proved  successful — to  beat  the  Socialists.  On  the 
evening  of  the  last  voting  day  the  amateur  campaign- 
manager  gave  a  dinner  to  several  of  those  who  had 
helped. 

He  was  much  more  like  a  young  American  college- 
bred  business  man  than  a  Russian,  and  the  home  in 
which  he  entertained  us  was  a  reminder  of  the  homes 
of  similar  young  married  people  in  pleasant  Ameri- 
can suburbs.  He  had  been  a  first-rate  all-round  ath- 
lete, and  had  a  cabinet  full  of  silver  cups  and  other 
trophies  won  at  tennis  and  track  games  during  his 
days  at  a  German  University,  and  while  his  was  the 
business  end  of  the  domestic  partnership,  his  handsome 
young  wife,  who  looked  as  if  she,  too,  might  play  a 
good  game  of  tennis,  supported,  in  true  American 
fashion,  culture  and  the  arts.  She  had  paintings  from 
several  contemporary  Finnish  artists,  including  her 
own  portrait,  and  various  signed  drawings,  and  her 
frank  enthusiasm  over  these  things,  and  over  the 
pieces  of  fine  old  furniture  she  had  picked  up  at  in- 
credibly small  prices,  was  exactly  like  that  of  the  same 
sort  of  young  housewife  in  Kansas  City  or  Grand 
Rapids. 

The  vote-counting,  on  the  elaborate  proportional 
plan  used  in  Finland,  continued  for  a  week.  The  cere- 
mony took  place  in  a  big  library-like  hall  in  the  Senate 
building.  Several  professorial  dignitaries  presided, 
while  the  clerical  work  was  done  by  young  women  as- 


14          NEW  MASTERS  OP  THE  BALTIC 

sisted  by  a  few  young  men  in  longtailed  black  coats. 
As  they  assembled  at  long  tables  and  the  big  blanket 
ballots  were  spread  out,  each  of  the  young  men  pro- 
ceeded down  the  length  of  his  table,  solemnly  shaking 
hands  with  each  of  the  young  ladies  and  giving  a  stiff 
little  bow.  It  was  in  quite  another  style  from  election 
nights  at  home,  with  the  count  going  on  in  smoke-filled 
cigar  stores  and  barber  shops. 

While  the  votes  were  being  counted  I  talked  with 
Finns  of  various  political  opinions.  A  professor  of 
sociology  at  the  University  was  particularly  hospitable 
and  kind.  He  had  made  explorations  in  New  Guinea 
and  written  a  book  about  it,  and  he  had  spears  and 
leather  shields  on  the  walls  of  his  study,  as  all  true 
explorers  should.  On  the  way  home  to  Finland  he 
had  crossed  America  and  tramped  down  Bright  Angel 
trail  to  the  bottom  of  the  Grand  Canyon,  and  up  again, 
and  had  stopped  in  several  of  our  large  cities.  His 
wife  said  that  she  thought  Finns  and  Americans  were 
a  good  deal  alike — anyhow,  they  got  on  well  together. 
He  had  no  hatred  for  Russians,  he  said,  and  admired 
them  in  many  ways  and  wished  them  well.  They  had 
a  "wonderful  humanity,"  yet  the  Finns,  nevertheless, 
were  ripe  for  independence.  The  two  peoples  were 
so  different  they  could  never  get  along  well  together. 

"Still,  whatever  we  do,  we  should  do  with  Russia's 
consent.  To  get  our  independence  by  violence  would 
only  mean  trouble  sooner  or  later." 

Another,  the  successful  manager  of  a  large  business 
who  had  begun  life  as  an  immigrant  in  America  and 
rather  prided  himself  on  his  hardheadedness,  had  little 
interest  in  independence.  It  was  a  sentiment,  he  said, 


RUSSIA'S  IRELAND  15 

speaking  from  what  seemed  then  the  "realistic"  ac- 
ceptance of  the  dominance  of  Russia  or  Germany  or 
both,  and  very  likely  the  Germans  would  take  Finland 
before  the  war  was  over.  It  would  be  the  natural  thing 
to  do  if  they  decided  to  take  Petrograd.  Doubtless 
they  wouldn't  keep  it,  but  would  merely  use  it  for 
Peace  Conference  bargaining.  He  told  how  they  had 
got  flour  before  the  war  by  way  of  Liibeck  and  other 
Baltic  ports. 

"The  grain  was  Russian  grain,  but  we  could  get  the 
flour  cheaper  through  Germany  than  we  could  buying 
it  direct  from  the  Russians  and  it  was  clean  when  we 
got  it,  and  when  we  paid  for  a  lot  we  got  the  whole  lot, 
and  not  80  per  cent  of  it." 

Senator  Holsti,  a  foreign  editor,  when  not  busy  as 
one  of  the  leaders  of  the  Young  Finns,  and  little  dream- 
ing, probably,  that  he  would  be  Foreign  Minister  of 
an  independent  Finland  in  another  two  years,  was 
particularly  interesting  because  of  the  fact  that,  while 
just  as  cultivated  and  amiable  a  gentleman  as  any 
Swedish  Finn  conservative,  he  was  himself  looked  on 
as  a  radical  and  a  true-blue  Finn. 

"They  ought  to  be  proud  to  be  Finns — they  are  no 
more  Swedish  than  Roosevelt  is  Dutch,"  he  said.  Fin- 
land had  been  held  back  by  the  conservatism  of  the 
Swedish  Finns,  who  had  "fought  every  reform  for  a 
generation  past,  for  fear  it  would  decrease  their  power 
and  prestige."  The  extreme  demands  of  the  peasants 
nowadays  were  largely  due,  he  thought,  to  the  stupid 
reaction  of  the  past  generation.  He  was  for  buying 
up  the  Crown  and  other  idle  lands,  and  distributing 
them  among  the  people  who  couldn't  get  enough  to 


16  NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

live  on.  Finns  weren't  disloyal — they  only  asked  that 
the  Russian  soldiers  and  sailors  be  used  for  something 
beside  eating  them  out  of  house  and  home — for  pur- 
poses of  defense  and  not  those  of  international  robbery. 

Certainly,  he  said,  the  time  had  come  for  Finland's 
independence.  They  were  different  in  every  way;  they 
had  built  up  a  civilization  of  their  own;  it  was  absurd 
that  three  and  a  half  million  people — there  were  only 
about  six  thousand  Russians — should  be  ruled  by 
strangers  from  Petrograd.  The  talk  about  Russia's 
danger  from  Finland  was  not  well  founded.  There 
never  could  be  any  danger  from  the  Finns  themselves. 
As  for  the  Germans,  why  should  they  go  to  the  trouble 
of  getting  an  army  across  the  gulf  in  ships  when  they 
could  almost  as  well  invade  Russia  from  their  own 
territory?  With  Finland  independent  and  a  buffer 
state,  Europe  would,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  be  much 
better  arranged.  Sweden  would  have  less  fear  from  her 
traditional  Russian  bugaboo,  and  hence  be  less  forced 
to  look  to  Germany  for  help,  and  Russian  develop- 
ment would  take  its  natural  course — toward  warm 
water  and  the  southeast — instead  of  being  more  or 
less  artificially  pushed  out  toward  the  Atlantic. 

Senator  Tokoi,  the  Socialist  leader,  from  whose 
door  my  "bourgeois"  professor-guide  fled  precipitately 
as  soon  as  he  had  led  me  to  it,  was  a  solid,  capable- 
appearing  little  man,  who  received  me  with  some  mut- 
tered, half-ironical  phrase  about  a  "plain  working- 
man's  quarters,"  in  a  neat  little  flat  in  a  modern  apart- 
ment house,  like  the  homes  of  thousands  of  clerks  or 
prosperous  mechanics  in  New  York  or  Chicago.  He 
spoke  slowly  and  declined  to  get  excited  about  any- 


RUSSIA'S  IRELAND  17 

thing.  As  for  independence,  it  was  enough  to  say  that 
"Finland  would  get  along  better  if  not  tied  to  Russia." 
The  presence  of  the  Russian  soldiers  didn't  seem  to 
irritate  him  specially;  the  talk  about  their  dumping 
good  bread  in  the  harbor  he  thought  mostly  gossip. 
Doubtless  they  had  thrown  stuff  overboard,  but  that 
was  "only  an  episode."  Giving  away  the  Crown  lands 
wouldn't  help  much — they  were  away  up  north  mostly, 
and  not  much  good  for  farming.  The  people  did  want 
better  hours  for  work,  but  so  far  as  he  knew  they  hadn't 
tried  to  insist  on  eight  hours  for  the  stable  side  of 
dairying. 

He  was  more  animated  when  he  told  about  the 
places  he  had  worked  in  America — the  Colorado  mines, 
whither  he  had  gone  straight  from  his  immigrant's 
ship,  a  stone  quarry  near  Sacramento,  then  up  Van- 
couver way — he  had  been  all  over  our  Far  Western 
country.  It  was  with  the  air  of  a  man  who  had  ar- 
rived that  he  recalled  these  far-off  adventures.  "I'd 
like  to  go  back  there  some  day,"  he  said  as  I  was  leav- 
ing; "that's  where  I  got  my  start." 

The  discomfiture  of  the  cultivated  minority  at  being 
bossed  by  Mr.  Tokoi  was  understandable,  and  of  his 
somewhat  variegated  subsequent  experiences  there  is 
no  place  to  speak  here,  but  he  seemed  a  well-meaning 
man  of  some  force  and  shrewdness.  The  thing  that 
struck  me  most,  coming  fresh  from  Petrograd,  was 
the  difference  between  this  Finn  and  most  radical  Rus- 
sians. There  was  none  of  that  nai've  and  childlike 
quality  so  often  felt  among  the  non-Jewish  Russians — 
"poor  dears!"  as  I  once  heard  a  woman  remark  of  a 
mob  of  tovarishi.  This  man  might  be  pig-headed,  or 


18  NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

wrong,  or  dangerous,  but  he  was  "grown-up,"  he  had 
both  feet  on  the  ground,  and  knew  how  to  take  care 
of  himself. 

The  Russian  point  of  view  was  put  with  a  great 
deal  of  tact  by  the  young  vice-governor,  Baron  Korff, 
married  to  an  American  lady,  formerly  of  Washington. 
The  vice-governor,  in  his  unofficial  life,  was  also  con- 
nected with  the  University,  and  he  spoke,  therefore 
not  only  as  a  representative  of  the  Petrograd  Govern- 
ment, but  as  a  citizen  of  Helsingfors  as  well. 

He  granted  all  that  the  Finns  said  about  their  dif- 
ferent civilization — and  it  was  true,  as  anyone  could 
see  for  oneself,  they  had  built  up  an  external  culture, 
schools,  streets  and  so  on,  far  ahead  of  Russia.  He 
believed  in  giving  the  Finns  all  the  freedom  possible, 
but — here  he  opened  an  atlas  and  pointed  to  the  nar- 
row gulf  running  up  to  Petrograd.  The  fact  that  the 
Russian  navy,  in  spite  of  its  lack  of  discipline,  had 
succeeded  thus  far  in  keeping  the  Germans  out  of  the 
gulf,  was  proof  enough  of  its  natural  advantages. 

The  question  of  policy  here  was  a  practical  one, 
similar  to  that  which  the  English  face  with  Ireland, 
and  to  what  our  own  would  doubtless  be  if  we  had  a 
hostile  nation  close  to  New  York,  and  Long  Island 
or  Connecticut  should  demand  independence. 

He  spoke  of  the  murder  of  officers  at  Viborg  a  few 
weeks  before  and  of  the  tragic  position  Russian  officers 
were  in,  particularly  on  the  ships.  I  repeated  the  re- 
mark often  made  that  it  was  hard  to  reconcile  Russian 
good  nature  with  much  of  the  reported  brutality  to 
officers  against  whom  men  had  nothing  in  particular. 
The  vice-governor  nodded  sadly,  and  spoke  of  the 


RUSSIA'S  IRELAND  19 

bete  humaine  which  came  out  when  race  or  class  hatred 
was  hot  and  authority  removed,  our  own  American 
lynchings  and  burnings  were  examples — and  how, 
when  authority  returned,  the  same  people  became 
decent  human  beings  again. 

"They  don't  want  to  do  wrong,  but  they  have  a 
certain  horror  of  the  old  regime  and  all  its  symbols. 
They  see  everything  in  terms  of  international  brother- 
hood. If  you  tell  them  the  German  Emperor  is  the 
worst  enemy  of  international  brotherhood  and  ought 
to  be  smashed,  they  will  agree,  and  if  the  next  man 
tells  them  that  he's  a  human  being  like  everybody  else, 
and  let's  be  brothers  and  stop  fighting  and  make  peace, 
they'll  applaud  that,  too !" 

The  moral  condition  of  the  men  one  saw  loafing 
about  Helsingfors — the  same  men  the  Finns  objected 
to  so  much — was,  on  their  side,  the  vice-governor  said, 
really  tragic.  The  men  were  suffering — you  could  see 
it  in  their  faces.  They  hated  one  minute  and  the  next 
were  ashamed.  Before  the  revolution  they  hadn't 
been  allowed  to  read  much — only  children's  books — 
for  fear  they  would  get  too  many  political  ideas.  Now 
they  read,  or  had  read  to  them,  everything.  They 
were  overwhelmed  with  pamphlets  on  all  sorts  of  sub- 
jects of  which  they  had  only  the  dimmest  understanding 
— harangued  and  pulled  this  way  and  that  until  they 
didn't  know  where  they  were  at. 

The  seizing  of  the  ballroom  in  the  Governor's  palace 
"for  lectures,"  while  I  was  in  Helsingfors,  was  an  ex- 
ample of  this  groping.  On  another  day  sailors  with 
collection  boxes  appeared  in  the  streets,  and  posters 
were  tacked  up  addressed  to  "Sailor  Comrades,"  with 


30  NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

many  words  about  culture  and  progress,  calling  for 
contributions  to  a  "Sailors'  University." 

With  the  air  full  of  such  portents,  the  Kerensky 
regime  collapsed  a  few  weeks  later  and  the  Russian 
Bolshevists  seized  the  power.  After  they  dissolved 
the  Constituent  Assembly,  the  Finnish  bourgeois  par- 
ties asked  whether  they  were  ready  to  recognize  Fin- 
land's independence.  The  Bolshevists  intimated  that 
they  were,  but  meanwhile  continued  to  send  agitators 
and  Red  guards  across  the  border.  Before  any  definite 
understanding  was  reached,  the  question  of  indepen- 
dence was  blown  aside  by  the  Red  Revolution. 


CHAPTER  II 
RED  TERROR  AND  WHITE 

THE  Baltic  is  open  again  now,  one  does  not  need — 
as  in  1917 — to  go  up  almost  to  the  Arctic  Circle  and 
back  again  to  get  from  Sweden  to  Finland,  and  a  big 
white  steamer  sails  straight  across  the  Gulf  from  Stock- 
holm to  Helsingfors.  The  course  is  laid  through  the 
Islands — the  much-discussed  Aland  Islands  among 
them — which  are  almost  continuous  between  the  two 
mainlands,  and  the  trip  is  almost  like  one  down  some 
northern  river. 

Round  granite  rocks,  with  the  water  dropping  off 
sheer  and  green  from  their  edges,  are  always  in  sight, 
and  pines  and  white  birch,  and  as  the  big  ship  slides 
quietly  between  them  one  can  hear  the  shore  birds 
twittering.  Peasant  children  and  fisher  folk  run  down 
to  greet  the  ship,  the  elders  calling  out  long  and  cir- 
cumstantial messages  to  friends  of  theirs  in  the  crew, 
and  often  enough  you  could  toss  a  stone  ashore. 

After  twenty- four  hours  of  this,  the  "Ariadne"  (she 
was  built  with  Finnish  capital  and  is  the  pride  of  the 
Baltic  in  these  new  days  of  independence)  comes  into 
the  harbor  of  Helsingfors  in  the  early  evening,  just 
PS  the  military  bands  are  beginning  to  play  and  people 
to  promenade  in  the  Esplanade.  This  Esplanade — 
trees  and  walks,  running  straight  up  into  the  center  of 
the  town,  with  band-kiosks  and  open  air  cafes  at  either 

21 


22 

end — is  crowded  in  summer  at  this  hour  with  soldiers, 
sailors  and  civilians,  blonde-haired  girls  in  white  dresses 
and  stiff  young  officers,  saluting  and  clicking  spurs.  And 
coming  into  it  from  the  ship,  you  might  almost  fancy 
yourself  entering  some  Spanish-American  capital  be- 
fore the  war  was  thought  of — anywhere  in  the  world, 
in  fact,  but  the  latitude  of  Greenland  and  a  country 
literally  starving  not  long  ago,  and  just  emerging  from 
a  frightful  civil  war. 

The  white  night  descends;  and  imperceptibly,  without 
darkness — for  even  at  midnight  one  can  read  a  news- 
paper, and  though  doorways  are  black,  the  faces  of  the 
houses  above  them  seem  as  bright  as  day — throws 
over  the  whole  daytime  world  its  strange  enchantment. 
It  is  the  same,  yet  not  the  same.  The  outlines  are  there, 
yet  something  is  added  and  something  taken  away. 
One  moves  as  in  a  picture,  as  if  oneself  a  part  of  that 
ethereal  something  which  the  painter's  imagination 
adds  to  actuality.  The  bands  stop,  but  the  people 
keep  on  drifting,  curiously  out  of  the  world  and  at 
peace,  wrapped  in  unreality.  It  is  literally  out  of  a 
purple  sea  that  the  moon  rises,  and  the  pleasure  yachts 
far  out  among  the  harbor  islands,  their  white  sails 
and  all  the  air  between,  are  turned  to  amethyst. 

It  is  difficult  to  believe  in  such  moments,  not  merely 
that  Finland  has  problems,  but  that  any  political  prob- 
lems are  of  importance;  that  parties  and  parliaments 
are  not  mere  playthings,  and  this  the  real  reality.  The 
white  night,  while  it  lasts,  makes  anarchists  of  us  all. 
Men  are  good,  and  if  governments  would  but  leave 
them  alone,  they  would  get  along  quite  well  in  their 
beautiful  world. 


RED  TERROR  AND  WHITE  23 

When  you  get  up  next  morning,  however,  and  read 
what  the  conservative  Hufvudstadbladet  has  to  say 
about  Socialist  "rebels"  and  "Reds"  and  what  the 
Socialedemokratti  says  about  White  "robbers"  and 
"butchers,"  life  again  becomes  complicated.  And  you 
have  but  to  talk  with  almost  any  intelligent  Finn  of 
either  side  to  see  that  the  bands  and  the  crowded 
promenade  were  but  a  mask;  and  even  the  new  Con- 
stitution and  democratic  President  but  a  hopeful  fa- 
cade; and  that  behind  is  a  jagged  social  chasm  it  will 
take  years  of  slow  education  and  increasing  broad- 
mindedness  to  bridge,  and  blind  hate  and  fear  and 
smouldering  revenge  such  as  at  home — except  between 
blacks  and  whites — we  have  known  little  about. 

In  short,  anyone  can  see  in  Finland  what  the  term 
"class  war"  really  means.  And  this  detached  fragment 
of  the  old  Russian  Empire  shows  in  miniature  some- 
thing of  what  Russians  themselves  have  suffered,  and 
what  they  may  still  have  to  go  through.  Finland  had 
its  Red  revolution  and  its  Red  Terror;  its  counter- 
revolution and  White  Terror  afterward.  And  what 
these  comparatively  "western,"  cleanly,  law-abiding, 
pious  Lutherans  found  it  necessary  to  do  may  well  cause 
one  to  shrink  from  what  might  happen  in  half-Asiatic 
Russia  were  reaction  to  get  its  chance. 

The  revolution  was  over  when  next  I  returned  to 
Finland,  General  Mannerheim  was  in  power  and  the 
first  President  about  to  be  elected.  I  saw  neither  Red 
Terror  nor  White,  therefore,  with  my  own  eyes.  But 
it  has  seemed  worth  while,  nevertheless,  to  go  back  and 
follow  through  with  some  care  .this  Finnish  cycle. 
And  the  facts  here  collected  are  commended  to  two 


24 

sorts  of  people  at  home — to  those  adventurous  intel- 
lectuals who  talk  glibly  of  the  "coming  revolution," 
as  if  a  class  war  were  a  sort  of  jolly  thunderstorm, 
after  which,  all  wrongs  righted,  the  people,  unwounded 
and  unembittered,  go  on  living  as  before,  only  much 
more  happily;  and  to  those  others  who  see  "Bolshe- 
vism" under  each  and  every  dream  of  social  better- 
ment; who  believe  that  the  "only  way  to  crush  is  to 
crush,"  and  do  not  suspect  that  in  crushing  one,  a 
dozen  others  are  often  automatically  created  to  jump 
into  his  place. 

THE  RED  REVOLT 

We  have  already  seen  where  things  were  drifting 
in  Finland  in  the  autumn  of  1917.  The  coalition  of  the 
bourgeois  parties  to  beat  out  the  Socialists  was  mo- 
mentarily successful.  The  coalition  returned  102  mem- 
bers to  the  Diet  to  the  Socialists'  92.  After  a  failure 
at  compromise,  a  Ministry  was  formed  excluding  the 
Socialists  altogether.  The  Russian  Bolsheviks  did 
what  they  could  to  drive  their  Finnish  comrades  to 
be,  as  Lenin  put  it,  "less  meek."  And  after  the  bour- 
geois majority  had  authorized  the  Government  to 
take  any  measures  thought  necessary  to  preserve  order, 
after  appeals  for  help  had  been  addressed  to  several 
foreign  powers  and  White  Guards  had  begun  to  drill, 
the  Left  seized  the  power.  On  January  27,  1918,  the 
Diet  was  surrounded;  the  railways,  telegraphs  and 
telephones  seized,  and  the  Red  revolution  was  on. 

It  lasted  a  little  over  two  months — until  early  April, 
when  General  Mannerheim  and  his  White  Guards, 
aided  by  a  German  expeditionary  force  under  General 


RED  TERROR  AND  WHITE  25 

von  der  Goltz  defeated  the  Reds  utterly,  captured 
some  20,000  of  them,  and  reprisals  began. 

At  no  time  during  the  Red  regime  was  there  organ- 
ized killing  on  a  large  scale.  Helsingfors  was  taken 
without  bloodshed  and  given  up  after  slight  resistance. 
The  Terror — and  it  was  real  terror — was  due  to  de- 
sultory but  more  or  less  constant  killing  during  all  that 
time;  here  by  groups  of  peasants,  with  a  grievance, 
real  or  imagined,  against  the  local  landowners;  there 
by  bands  of  criminals  or  degenerates  turned  loose  on 
the  community  when  the  Reds  opened  the  prisons. 
Hideous  things  happened.  Men  are  said  to  have  been 
buried  alive,  and  to  have  had  their  feet  boiled  before 
being  finally  disposed  of.  The  typical  story  is  that 
of  the  family  found  with  their  tongues  nailed  to  a 
table.  This  may,  or  it  may  not,  have  happened.  I 
call  it  the  type-story  because  it  is  the  tale  repeated 
everywhere,  by  people  who  haven't  the  remotest  evi- 
dence to  back  it  up.  It  had  even  crossed  the  Baltic, 
and  in  Esthonia  that  summer  a  pretty  young  Bait 
baroness  told  it  to  me  as  something  the  Bolsheviks 
were  accustomed  to  commit  there.  It  is  one  of  those 
things,  which,  although  it  may  have  had  reality  some- 
where, presently  becomes  a  myth,  like  the  Belgian  chil- 
dren with  their  hands  cut  off.  I  know  of  no  one  who 
actually  saw  it. 

Nevertheless  there  were  atrocities  and  tortures. 
While  it  would  be  unfair  to  blame  such  things  to  Social* 
ism  or  even  to  Bolshevism,  if  they  were  mostly  done, 
as  seems  probable,  by  feeble-minded  people  turned 
loose  by  a  general  jail  delivery,  the  Red  regime  must, 
at  any  rate,  accept  an  indirect  responsibility. 


26  NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

The  word  "murder"  is  so  loosely  used  by  both  sides 
in  Finland  that  one  must  accept  figures  with  the  greatest 
caution,  but  it  seems  safe  to  say  that  the  number  of 
Red  killings  to  which  that  term  might  reasonably  be 
applied  was  not  more  than  1,000.  This  would  in- 
clude those  shot  while  trying  to  get  through  the  Red 
lines  to  the  White  forces  organizing  in  the  north. 

The  sort  of  tragedy  which  a  class  war  brings  to  the 
possessing  classes  is  illustrated  in  the  killing  of  the 
brothers  of  Annie  Furuhjelm.  Miss  Furuhjelm,  whom 
I  have  already  mentioned,  was  one  of  the  conservative 
members  of  the  Finnish  Diet,  and  as  well  known  in 
Finland  as  Mrs.  Pankhurst  in  England  or  Jane  Ad- 
dams  in  America.  The  men  members  of  her  family 
had  had  an  honorable  place  in  Finnish  public  life  for 
two  hundred  years.  They  did  not  work  with  their 
hands,  but  the  estate  in  southwest  Finland  in  the  neigh- 
borhood of  Abo  was  run  as  a  practical  farm,  and  as 
generals,  admirals  and  judges  they  were  not  idle.  They 
were  aristocrats  of  a  type  similar  to  our  own  colonial 
gentry,  who  left  their  Virginia  plantations  to  become 
Presidents. 

Their  neighborhood  was,  it  should  also  be  said,  one 
of  the  "Reddest"  in  Finland.  It  was  a  region  of  large 
estates  and  rather  patriarchal  customs,  and  the  "torp" 
farmers,  who  owned  no  land  but  paid  for  their  little 
farms  by  working  for  the  proprietor — two  days  with 
man  and  horse  a  week,  for  instance,  for  the  use  of 
sixteen  acres — were  dissatisfied.  There  were  a  good 
many  of  these  "torp"  tenants  on  most  estates. 

During  the  Red  days,  the  local  Reds — including 
peasants  with  whom  the  Furuhjelms  had  been  on  the 


RED  TERROR  AND  WHITE  27 

friendliest  terms — surrounded  the  house,  and  arrested 
Judge  Furuhjelm,  his  brother,  Colonel  Furuhjelm,  a 
young  man  studying  law  with  the  judge,  and  a  secre- 
tary. There  was  no  accusation  against  them.  The 
judge  had  been  known  as  a  particularly  just  and  liberal 
man.  He  had  built  a  house  on  his  estate  in  which  his 
Social-Democrat  peasants  could  hold  their  meetings; 
some  of  his  friends  had  even  jokingly  called  him  a 
socialist.  The  men  were  confined  in  an  almshouse 
nearby  for  several  weeks,  and  finally  shot.  The  ladies 
of  the  family,  under  guard  in  their  own  house,  and  not 
knowing  from  one  day  to  the  next  what  their  own  fate 
might  be,  did  not  learn  of  the  executions  until  days 
afterward. 

There  must  have  been  scores  of  just  such  wholly 
unjustifiable  killings  among  the  better  sort  of  land- 
owners in  Russia.  It  would  be  as  useless  to  attempt  to 
find  any  logical  explanation  for  such  murders  as  to 
try  to  explain  the  slaughter  of  the  youth  of  Europe  by 
any  individual  fault  on  one  side  or  individual  sense  of 
offense  on  the  other.  The  individual  becomes  the 
symbol  of  some  wrong,  real  or  imagined,  and  he  is 
killed  quite  blindly  in  the  hope  that  the  wrong  may  be 
righted.  It  might  be  said  in  this  case  that  the  "torp" 
peasants  have  now  the  right,  by  a  subsequent  decree  o£ 
the  Diet,  to  buy  the  farms  which  they  have  cultivated 
at  the  price  which  their  land  would  have  sold  for 
before  the  war. 

In  addition  to  killing  there  was  a  good  deal  of  sack- 
ing and  general  destruction.  And  although  Finland 
was  on  the  verge  of  starvation — and  presently  to  be 
over  it — cattle  were  slaughtered  for  no  reason  at  all 


28  NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

and  hay  and  grain  burned.  Destruction  of  this  sort 
is  often,  however,  much  less  than  is  imagined.  Unless 
people  are  drunk  or  insane,  or  unless  they  destroy 
things  en  bloc  by  setting  a  fire,  they  are  held  back  by 
centuries  of  tradition  and  all  sorts  of  unconscious  in- 
hibitions. The  Bolshevik  depredations  in  the  Baltic 
provinces  were  often  a  sort  of  childish  vandalism — 
sticking  a  bayonet  through  a  family  portrait,  breaking 
vases  and  so  on,  rather  than  thoroughgoing  destruc- 
tion. I  spent  the  better  part  of  an  hour  one  evening 
in  Esthonia  going  through  room  after  room  of  a  fine 
old  baronial  house  admiring  the  antique  furniture. 
The  rooms  could  scarcely  have  been  fuller,  it  seemed, 
and  not  a  scratch  on  the  varnish.  The  dialogue  during 
this  progress  consisted  of  exclamations  of  admiration 
from  the  guests — a  party  of  appreciative  French  offi- 
cers— and  sighs  from  our  hostess  that  the  Bolsheviki 
had  left  them  nothing. 

Meanwhile,  in  the  north,  near  Vasa,  General  Man- 
nerheim  was  organizing  the  White  Guard.  Baron 
Mannerheim  was  a  Swede-Finn  by  birth,  but  he  had 
commanded  one  of  the  smart  Russian  Guard  regiments 
of  cavalry  under  Brusilov,  and  had  been  a  favorite  at 
the  Petrograd  court.  Handsome,  dashing  and  capable, 
with  unusual  charm  of  manner  and  a  keen  eye  for  the 
picturesque,  he  was  an  ideal  hero  for  a  counter- 
revolution. The  bourgeoisie  were  with  him  to  a  man, 
and  he  also  gathered  about  him  some  of  the  northern 
peasants — fathers  and  sons  coming  in,  it  was  said,  in 
true  minute-man  style,  with  their  long  muzzle-loading 
rifles  used  for  shooting  seals.  Arms  were  the  great 


o 


O  ta 


o  o 

w    „  H 

C^    ^  £ 

_-  H  Q 

S  o  55 

—   u  a 


>5  w 

s! 


O 


RED  TERROR  AND  WHITE  29 

difficulty,  but  some  5,000  rifles  were  taken  from  a 
Russian  garrison,  and  the  force  grew  formidable. 

Mannerheim  himself  had  come  up  from  the  Ukraine 
disguised,  and  contrived  to  slip  by  Petrograd  and 
through  Helsingfors.  To  get  to  his  growing  army 
from  the  south  the  young  men  had  to  cross  the  Red 
lines,  and  if  they  were  caught  they  were  shot  on  sight. 
In  the  capital  itself  life  was  only  somewhat  less  harass- 
ing for  the  bourgeoisie  than  on  lonely  country  estates. 
There  were  killings  every  now  and  then — nobody 
knew  what  the  next  day  might  bring. 

A  young  lady  who  had  lived  through  the  winter  of 
1918  in  Helsingfors  showed  me  where  a  chance  bullet 
had  broken  one  of  her  bedroom  windows  and  plowed 
through  three  or  four  books  in  the  case  along  the 
wall.  She  and  her  mother  had  hidden  a  White  officer 
for  several  weeks  in  their  apartment. 

"It's  the  waiting,  day  after  day,"  she  said,  "and 
thinking  all  the  time — 'Now  to-morrow  they  may  come 
here!'"  .  .  . 

She  had  been  one  of  a  committee  of  women  who 
had  acted  as  a  go-between  to  identify  and  claim  the 
bodies  of  Whites  whom  the  Reds  had  killed.  Men 
relatives  were  naturally  in  danger  of  being  seized  them- 
selves. The  Reds  would  call  her  up  and  say  that 
they  had  another  body  to  be  identified — for  all  these 
victims  they  used  the  Finnish  word  for  "butcher." 
Altogether  that  winter,  she  helped  to  identify  some 
seventy  corpses. 

Her  own  experience  as  a  writer,  very  different  from 
that  of  most  American  writers,  who  can  share  slightly 


30  NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

with  the  popular  magazines  their  advertising  incomes, 
had  led  her  not  to  feel  so  much  as  she  otherwise  might 
the  wrongs  of  the  proletariat.  A  Finnish  writer  has 
a  population  of  only  three  million  to  appeal  to,  a  com- 
paratively small  number  of  which,  of  course,  will  buy 
his  books.  He  has  no  big  magazines  to  which  to  sell 
his  "first  serial  rights."  She  would  spend  months 
writing  a  book  and  feel  that  it  had  been  reasonably 
successful  if  she  made  a  thousand  marks — in  peace 
times  about  $200,  less  than  $100  at  the  time  she  spoke. 
People  who  worked  with  their  hands  were  well  paid, 
she  thought,  when  one  considered  how  hard  it  was  for 
teachers,  writers  and  such  to  get  along. 

Suddenly,  in  April,  the  Germans  came.  The  nego- 
tiations that  led  up  to  their  coming  were  not  very  clear 
and  participation  in  the  invitation  was  not  enthusiasti- 
cally claimed  afterward  by  those  most  interested.  Some 
say  now  that  Mannerheim  and  his  White  Guard  could 
have  handled  the  situation  alone;  others  say  that  the 
Germans  saved  southern  Finland  from  destruction. 
Their  prestige  alone  was  a  powerful  weapon  in  so 
little  a  country — they  landed  at  Hango  on  the  8th, 
and  on  the  I3th,  after  slight  resistance,  marched  into 
Helsingfors. 

For  the  whole  bourgeois  population  it  was  like  the 
sudden  awakening  from  a  nightmare.  For  months, 
terror  and  uncertainty,  and  then  all  at  once — for  the 
Red  press  had  concealed  as  far  as  possible  the  Ger- 
mans' coming — there  was  order  again,  and  the  Ger- 
mans' military  bands  were  booming  away  in  the  Esplan- 
ade. People  went  wild  with  joy;  women  hugged  the 


RED  TERROR  AND  WHITE  31 

horses  of  the  German  troopers,  put  roses  in  their 
bridles  and  fed  them  with  sugar,  although  sugar  had 
been  almost  unknown  for  months. 

The  Germans  had  not  come  into  Finland  merely 
for  their  health;  had  the  war  ended  differently  they 
might  have  tried  to  annex  the  country,  or,  at  any  rate, 
have  given  it  a  German  king.  Yet  the  gratitude  felt 
by  a  considerable  portion  of  the  middle-class  Finns  was 
genuine  and  understandable.  In  one  of  the  parks  in 
the  center  of  Helsingfors  are  the  graves  of  those  who 
died  in  capturing  the  city,  heaped  always  with  flowers. 
German  children  were  invited  over  to  Finland  to  be 
fed  real  food  in  Finnish  country  homes.  One  of  them, 
the  son  of  a  Berlin  postal  clerk,  happened  to  be  at  a 
country  house  where  I  spent  a  few  days.  He  and  his 
brothers  and  sisters  had  lived  largely  on  carrots  the 
winter  before,  he  said.  He  had  gained  twelve  pounds 
in  a  few  weeks.  My  hostess  said  that  some  had  thought 
it  unwise  for  them  to  try  to  feed  foreigners  when  Fin- 
land itself  was  just  recovering  from  starvation,  and 
was  still  short  of  food.  She  felt  otherwise — "Any 
food  we  may  give  these  children  would  be  small  re- 
turn for  what  they  saved  us  from !"  she  said. 

The  Whites,  cooperating  with  the  Germans,  at- 
tacked the  main  Red  force  from  two  sides,  cut  their 
communications,  and  captured  some  20,000  of  them 
in  a  herd.  So  far  as  armed  resistance  was  concerned 
the  revolution  was  soon  crushed.  It  is  estimated 
that  about  10,000  Finns  were  killed  on  each  side  in 
actual  fighting.  Svinhufvud  became  Regent  and  con- 
tinued as  such  during  the  terrible  summer  of  1918, 
when  all  Finland  was  more  or  less  in  a  state  of  starva- 


32 

tion  and  thousands  of  Red  prisoners  were  dying  in 
the  prison  camps.  In  October  the  Diet — from  which 
the  Socialist  members  had  been  removed  by  the  simple 
method  of  accusing  them  of  treason — declared  for  a 
monarchy  with  the  German  prince,  Frederick  Charles 
of  Hesse,  for  King. 

It  should  not  be  assumed  that  this  necessarily  repre- 
sented merely  blind  reaction,  although  some  of  the 
ultra-conservative  Finns,  especially  Swedish-Finns,  are 
undoubtedly  reactionary  enough.  There  were  quite 
sane  and  moderate  men  who  felt,  during  the  summer 
of  1918,  that  in  the  then  state  of  the  world  and  of 
Finland,  an  experiment  with  republican  government 
could  never  succeed.  The  war,  however,  decided  the 
matter.  When  the  Germans  were  beaten  in  the  West, 
the  prince  decided  that  he  did  not  care  to  become  king 
of  Finland.  Svinhufvud,  who  had  been  pro-German 
all  along,  stepped  out,  and  Mannerheim,  who  had  gone 
abroad,  was  recalled  and  made  Regent.  In  June,  1919, 
the  Diet — to  which  the  March  election  had  given  the 
Socialists  80  out  of  200  seats — adopted  a  Republican 
constitution,  providing  for  a  one-chamber  parliament 
with  a  cabinet  and  a  president  to  be  elected,  first  by 
the  Diet  and  afterward  by  the  people  for  a  term  of 
six  years.  With  the  moderate-liberal  Professor  Stahl- 
berg  as  President,  order  and  food  again  in  the  land, 
and  Finland's  independence  recognised  by  various 
friendly  powers,  the  little  country  began  to  assume  the 
outer  air  of  peace  and  stability  which  I  have  described 
as  meeting  the  stranger  stepping  off  the  Stockholm 
boat. 

This  condition  did  not  follow  the  White  victory  at 


RED  TERROR  AND  WHITE  83 

Lahtis  and  Kauvola,  however,  as  the  grass  grows  green 
after  the  rain.  And  having  shown  something  of  what 
a  Red  terror  is  like,  it  now  remains  to  speak  of  the 
White  terror  that  followed  it. 

COUNTER-REVOLUTION 

One  of  the  first  persons  I  saw  on  arriving  in  Hel« 
singfors  in  1919,  was  a  young  business  man  who  had 
been  polite  to  me  during  my  first  visit  two  years  before. 
During  a  chat  in  his  library  he  showed  me  a  photo- 
graphic history  of  the  training  and  exploits  of  the 
White  Guards.  There  were  pictures  of  the  front;  of 
Mannerheim's  triumphal  entry  into  Helsingfors  in 
May;  and  some  curiously  realistic  photographs  of  the 
execution  of  Red  prisoners. 

Of  the  latter  there  were  three  views.  The  first 
showed  a  row  of  men  facing  the  firing  squad.  The 
next  showed  them  just  after  the  first  volley  was  fired 
—only  a  few  seriously  hit,  apparently;  one  fallen  flat 
on  his  face  in  the  snow;  another  slowly  kneeling;  one 
turning  aside  with  his  hands  in  his  overcoat  pockets 
as  one  turns  from  a  cold  wind;  another,  bareheaded 
with  his  hands  clasped  in  front  of  his  lips,  praying, 
or  perhaps  merely  blowing  on  his  cold  fingers.  The 
third  showed  them  after  several  volleys  had  stretched 
all  in  a  heap  on  the  snow.  In  the  foreground  the  boy 
who  had  had  his  hands  clasped,  lay  on  his  back  with 
his  mouth  wide  open  as  if  gasping  for  breath,  and 
indeed  the  steam  of  what  was  perhaps  his  last  breath 
could  actually  be  seen  in  the  frosty  air. 

There  was  a  certain  informality  in  this  row  of  quite 
ordinary  looking  men  in  overcoats  who  might  have 


84 

been  picked  up  in  any  winter  street  at  home,  which, 
with  the  camera's  clumsy  literalness,  combined  into 
something  curiously  horrible.  I  remarked  on  the  fact 
that  none  of  the  men  was  blindfolded.  "Oh,"  said  my 
host  quickly,  "there  was  no  time  for  that!" 

This  remark,  falling  so  naturally  in  the  quiet  air 
of  that  pleasant  library,  may  perhaps  suggest  more 
effectively  than  many  words  the  chasm  a  class  war 
brings  and  the  general  nature  of  what  happened  when 
the  Whites  set  out  to  crush  the  revolution. 

There  were,  according  to  the  official  figures,  after 
the  first  weeding  out  of  the  obviously  innocent,  73,915 
Red  prisoners.  The  Reds  assert  that  the  number  was 
nearer  90,000,  or  nearly  3  per  cent  of  the  entire  popu- 
lation. Naturally,  only  a  very  small  percentage  of 
such  an  army  were  guilty  of  any  crime.  They  were 
men,  women  and  boys,  peasants  and  city  workpeople, 
who  for  one  reason  or  another  v/ere  assumed  to  have 
taken  some  part  or  had  some  sympathy  with  the  Red 
revolution.  There  were  murderers  among  them,  and 
there  were  doubtless  humanitarian  dreamers  too;  there 
were  women  who  had  cooked  for  Red  soldiers  and 
shoemakers  who  had  made  boots  for  them.  Thou- 
sands must  simply  have  been  those  who  follow  the 
crowd, — do  what  the  rest  of  the  folks  who  live  in  their 
part  of  town  and  eat  their  sort  of  food  and  have 
their  sort  of  amusements  happen  to  be  doing  at  that 
particular  time. 

The  contagion  of  a  Utopian  revolution  is  like  any 
other  epidemic.  What  should  have  been  done  with 
this  great  herd  of  more  or  less  ignorant  people  might 
be  an  interesting  subject  for  academic  discussion.  What 


RED  TERROR  AND  WHITE  35 

the  Whites  actually  did  was  to  kill  a  good  many  out 
of  hand  and  to  cram  the  rest  into  prison  camps.  No 
preparations  had  been  made  for  any  such  number. 
There  were  not  at  first  even  roofs  to  cover  them.  One 
camp  would  have  used  all  its  available  space  and  food, 
and  suddenly  a  telegram  would  come — "Fifteen  hun- 
dred more  prisoners  arrive  to-day."  They  did  what 
they  could. 

Everybody  was  pinched  for  food  in  Finland  in  1918 
and  the  winter  of  1919.  People  made  bread  out  of 
bark  and  straw  and  sawdust.  With  a  condition  of 
literal  starvation  among  thousands  of  the  population 
outside,  it  is  not  difficult — even  without  accepting  the 
Red  assertion  that  prisoners  were  deliberately  starved 
— to  imagine  conditions  in  the  camps. 

Accurate  figures  are  almost  impossible  to  get.  The 
Reds  were  in  wretched  condition,  many  of  them,  when 
taken  prisoners.  Diseases  of  various  sorts  naturally 
broke  out.  When  an  undernourished  man  dies  of 
pneumonia  it  is  not  easy  to  tell  where  the  disease  began 
and  the  starvation  left  off.  That  many  literally  starved 
everybody  admits.  The  Socialists  and  their  sympa- 
thizers assert  that  of  the  11,783  who  are  officially 
admitted  to  have  died  in  the  camps  up  to  April,  1919, 
the  larger  part  died  of  starvation.  In  figures  which 
the  Foreign  Office  sent  me  in  answer  to  a  request  for 
information,  the  statement  is  made  that  of  the  11,783, 
"only  551  died  of  starvation." 

Professor  Tigerstedt,  a  Finnish  physiologist  of  in- 
ternational reputation,  in  a  report  to  the  Government 
not  originally  intended,  apparently,  to  be  made  public, 
found  that  in  the  prison  camp  at  Ekenas  the  death  rate 


36          NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

per  thousand  per  week  increased  from  5.90  between 
June  6  and  12,  1918,  to  43-33  between  July  23  and 
31.  The  latter  figures  would  mean  a  death  rate,  per 
week  in  Helsingfors,  which  has  about  200,000  people, 
of  8,466.  With  such  mortality  there  would,  of  course, 
be  no  annual  death  rate  at  all.  Everybody  would  be 
dead  in  less  than  six  months ! 

In  speeches,  booklets  and  newspaper  articles — some 
of  them  in  foreign  papers  of  good  standing — the  case 
against  the  Whites  was  presented  with  great  detail. 
General  Mannerheim's  regime  did  not  seem  to  be  suf- 
ficiently interested  in  foreign  opinion  to  make  any  de- 
tailed answer  to  these  charges.  The  Minister  of  Jus- 
tice, Soderholm,  in  answer  to  an  interpellation  in  the 
Diet,  in  April,  1919,  made  a  rather  sketchy  reply  in 
which  he  stated  that  the  number  of  Red  prisoners  on 
June  27,  1918,  was  73,915 — as  already  stated,  "among 
them  about  4,600  women.  During  the  first  investiga- 
tion about  ten  per  cent  were  released.  About  15,600 
more  were  released  with  the  obligation  to  come  before 
the  court  when  called.  Some  31,000  were  set  free 
with  conditional  sentences.  The  amnesties  of  October 
30  and  December  7,  1918,  reduced  the  number  by  some 
16,000.  On  April  5,  1919,  the  number,  including  those 
subsequently  arrested,  was  5,950  men  and  45  women; 
72  cases  had  not  yet  been  brought  before  the  court." 

I  saw  none  of  the  Finnish  prison  camps — it  was  not 
an  easy  thing  to  do — but  just  across  the  Gulf,  in 
Esthonia,  I  visited,  in  the  summer  of  1919,  with  some 
of  our  Relief  Administration  officers,  a  camp  of  Red 
prisoners  which  must  have  resembled,  one  imagined, 


RED  TERROR  AND  WHITE  87 

the  look  of  some  of  the  Finnish  prisons  and  prisoners 
as  they  were  the  year  before. 

Some  four  or  five  hundred  men  and  a  few  women, 
raked  together  when  the  Russian  Bolsheviks  were 
driven  out  of  Reval  in  the  autumn  of  1918,  had  been 
taken  out  to  the  lonely  island  of  Nargen,  six  or  seven 
miles  from  Reval,  and  shut  up  in  a  high,  barbed-wire 
stockade.  They  were  lying,  most  of  them,  as  we  came 
up,  in  or  about  their  semi-dugout  barracks,  as  if  asleep, 
sick  or  dead.  The  few  who  were  moving  suggested 
moving  pictures  run  at  about  one-third  normal  speed. 
They  had  the  air  of  being  so  weak  they  could  scarcely 
more  than  stand. 

It  may  have  been,  as  the  young  officer  showing  us 
about  said,  that  they  were  fed  enough  now.  If  so,  it 
seemed  that  food  had  come  for  most  of  them  too  late. 
Half  had  the  look  of  men  already  dead.  A  sharp  rap 
would  have  disposed  of  any  of  them,  it  seemed,  like 
so  many  white  rabbits.  Their  rags  and  dirt  and  wretch- 
ness,  their  swelled,  misshapen  limbs — for  "war 
oedema,"  that  is  to  say  malnutrition,  had  puffed  their 
legs  up  to  twice  their  natural  size — combined  to  make 
a  picture  at  once  so  repellent  and  so  pitiful  that  one 
scarcely  knew  whether  they  should  all  be  packed  oft 
to  a  sanitarium,  baths  and  food,  or  simply  swept  aside 
as  refuse  of  which  the  earth  were  better  rid.  What- 
ever crimes  they  had  committed,  it  was  certainly  a 
crime  against  anything  with  a  human  body  and  soul 
that  it  should  be  brought  to  this. 

We  stepped  into  one  of  the  crowded,  noisome  bar- 
racks— a  path  between  two  wooden  shelves  packed 
with  heaps  of  rags  from  which  there  came  now  and 


38          NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

then  a  cough — the  whole  lot  looked  to  be  in  the  last 
stages  of  tuberculosis.  At  the  further  end  were  wo- 
men. Near  the  door  a  young  fellow  held  his  bare 
feet  in  the  ashes  of  a  little  cook-stove,  although  the 
day  was  sunny  and  warm. 

A  crowd  of  them  shuffled  round  after  us,  trying  to 
tell  their  stories  and  snatch  while  they  could  this  chance 
straw  of  hope.  One  old  man,  sixty-three  he  said,  so 
weak  he  could  only  whisper,  and  so  unstrung  nervously 
he  could  scarce  hold  himself  together  long  enough 
to  tell  his  story  at  all,  said  that  he  had  three  sons  in 
the  Esthonian  army  fighting  the  Bolsheviks.  They 
had  brought  him  in  with  the  rest  when  his  village  was 
taken.  His  wife,  in  similar  condition,  was  with  him. 
They  had  no  trial,  they  said,  no  notion  of  what  was 
charged  against  them.  Others  with  similar  stories 
had  been  wasting  away  in  this  place  since  the  preceding 
autumn. 

You  must  not  conclude  from  this  that  the  Esthonians 
are  necessarily  a  barbarous  people.  Such  things  might 
happen  even  in  New  York,  after  five  years  of  foreign 
and  civil  war  and  more  or  less  general  starvation,  with 
those  in  authority  at  the  moment  back  in  Manhattan 
too  busy  patching  the  new  order  together  to  think  of 
a  few  Communists  sent  months  before  to  some  island 
down  the  harbor. 

The  brand-new  Parliament  in  Reval  was  absorbed  in 
the  land  question,  and  in  getting  enough  exports  to  pay 
for  the  imports  the  country  couldn't  get  along  without 
— probably  many  of  the  delegates  didn't  even  know 
there  was  a  prison  camp  on  Nargen,  or  if  they  did, 
thought  as  much  about  it  as  the  average  man  thinks 


RED  TERROR  AND  WHITE  39 

of  what  may  be  going  on  in  the  State  penitentiary. 
How  many  thousands  of  men  and  women,  for  whom 
somebody  cared,  who  had  their  own  possibilities  of 
usefulness  and  beauty,  have  perished  like  starved  city 
cats,  all  over  Europe,  not  because  anybody  deliberately 
willed  it,  but  merely  because  it  was  nobody's  particular 
business  to  help  them,  and  they  were  caught  in  the  hope- 
less jungle  of  military  red  tape,  personal  indifference, 
and  general  orders  issued  by  some  authority  as  far 
away  from  them  as  the  moon! 

"Restoring  order"  in  Finland  was  not,  however,  a 
mere  matter  of  starvation  in  prison  camps.  I  have 
spoken  of  the  thousand  murders  the  Reds  are  said  to 
have  committed  and  of  the  tortures  which  occasionally 
accompanied  them.  When  victorious  troops  came, 
hot-foot,  on  such  sights,  it  is  not  hard  to  picture  what 
happened  to  the  Reds  captured  near  the  place,  whether 
guilty  or  not.  Even  without  provocation,  the  Whites 
were  not  loath,  generally,  to  use  what  are  described 
as  vigorous  measures.  The  word  "murder"  is  so 
loosely  employed  by  both  sides  in  Finland,  and  the 
Reds  apply  it  so  carelessly  to  include  summary  execu- 
tions, executions  after  some  sort  of  trial,  and  even 
those  killed  in  what  might  be  called  fighting,  that  exact 
figures  are  almost  impossible  to  get. 

The  New  Statesman,  in  an  article  published  in  April 
1919,  stated  that  the  Whites  "had  shot  from  15,000 
to  20,000  out  of  hand,  without  any  form  of  trial.  In 
this  way  500  were  executed  at  Rihimaki;  2000  at 
Lahtis;  4000  at  Viborg;  600  at  Tammerfors;  450  at 
Vichtis.  At  Lahtis  200  women  were  shot  in  the  second 


40  NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

week  of  May  in  a  batch,  with  machine  guns,"  etc.  My 
personal  impression  is  that  this  article  was  recklessly 
one-sided  and  inaccurate,  and  I  quote  it  merely  as  an 
example  of  the  sort  of  thing  printed  in  reputable  peri- 
odicals to  which  no  adequate  reply  was  made. 

A  Finnish  Socialist  who  had  made  it  his  business  to 
collect  such  statistics  told  me  that  18,788  had  been 
killed  without  any  trial  except  military  court-martial. 
As  an  example,  he  spoke  of  Vichtis,  where,  he  said, 
only  four  persons  had  been  murdered  by  the  Reds.  The 
Whites  came,  he  said,  went  to  the  church  where  the 
prisoners  were  collected,  asked  for  the  most  dangerous, 
and  took  out  and  shot  down  400  men  and  women. 

A  White  to  whom  I  repeated  this  statement  said 
that  he  knew  of  his  own  personal  knowledge  of 
eighteen  Red  murders  at  Vichtis,  and  that  the  Whites 
had  not  executed  more  than  a  hundred.  Practically 
every  statement  on  either  side  is  similarly  disputed. 
The  facts  may  never  be  known,  even  roughly,  until 
some  neutral  commission  is  permitted  to  make  a  thor- 
ough investigation.  It  is  plain,  however,  that  the 
lives  destroyed  in  prison  and  out  of  it  after  the  fight- 
ing was  over  were  many  more  than  those  killed  in 
actual  war,  and  that  so  far  as  mere  numbers  went, 
the  White  Terror  was  several  times  as  destructive  as 
the  Red. 

Of  the  70,000  or  80,000  original  prisoners,  27,000 
are  said  by  the  Socialists  to  have  been  sentenced  for 
three  years  or  more.  Between  400  and  500  were  con- 
demned after  formal  trial  to  death  for  high  treason. 

The  accusation  was  repeatedly  made  that  prisoners 


RED  TERROR  AND  WHITE  41 

were  flogged  to  make  them  confess,  or  to  punish  them. 
One  particularly  notorious  case  was  that  of  a  police 
officer,  Troborg,  who  is  said  to  have  flogged  a  prisoner 
for  twelve  hours — whipping  him  as  long  as  he  could 
stand  it,  letting  him  rest,  and  then  going  at  him  again. 
The  Minister  of  Justice,  answering  an  interpellation 
on  this  subject,  said  that  in  only  two  cases  had  it  been 
proved  that  prisoners  had  been  beaten.  He  admitted 
that  "the  investigator,  Mr.  Troborg,  had  been  too 
brusque  in  his  manners  toward  prisoners,"  but  the  Min- 
ister's statement — "that  while  a  thick  whip  had  been 
found  in  the  room  of  Mr.  Troborg  and  also  in  the 
rooms  of  his  assistants,  these  were  only  used  to  beat 
the  walls  and  tables,  in  order  to  frighten  the  prisoners" 
— seemed  to  leave  something  to  be  desired. 

Among  his  statistics  on  the  domestic  results  of  the 
revolution,  Mr.  Helenius-Seppala,  of  the  Finnish  Min- 
istry of  Social  Affairs,  stated  that  there  were  records  of 
23,000  fatherless  children.  The  fathers  of  10,000  of 
these  children  were  still  in  prison  or  unable  to  do  any- 
thing for  their  families.  The  fathers  of  13,000  were 
missing  or  dead.  Of  these  13,000,  760  were  children 
of  "White"  fathers.  Of  the  remaining  12,240  "Red" 
children,  the  fathers  of  5,000  had  been  executed,  of 
3,100  had  died  fighting,  and  of  1,100  had  been  "mur- 
dered." A  Manchester  Guardian  correspondent,  an 
intelligent  but  prejudiced  observer,  in  quoting  these  fig- 
ures, estimated  that  between  25,000  and  30,000  Reds 
had  been  destroyed  in  one  way  and  another  after  the 
White  Guard  was  victorious  and  the  revolution  sup- 
posedly crushed. 


42  NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

This  "crushing"  process,  in  milder  forms,  through 
censorship,  passport  restrictions,  secret  police,  and 
social  ostracism,  continued  long  afterward;  in  certain 
cases  is  still  going  on.  Two  years  after  the  revolution 
there  were  still  large  numbers  of  provisional  prisoners, 

people  unable  to  leave  their  towns.  One  could  not 
travel  anywhere  in  Finland  without  a  passport,  few 
could  leave  the  country  at  all.  The  secret  police,  three 
years  afterward,  were  still  busy  listening  to  telephone 
conversations — even  of  Cabinet  Ministers — following 
people  about,  descending  on  premises  suspected  for  one 
reason  or  another,  in  quite  the  good  old  Russian  style. 
Nearly  every  afternoon  in  Helsingfors  in  summer 
one  could  see  the  White  Guards  drilling  in  the  parks 
— middle-aged  men  from  their  offices,  the  same  public- 
spirited  business  men,  lawyers  and  bankers  who  would 
turn  out  for  such  service  at  home  after  our  own  Red 
revolution  had  been  put  down.  There  were  said  to  be 
some  80,000  of  these  determined  volunteers  in  Fin- 
land— enough,  one  was  assured,  to  guarantee  that 
there  be  no  serious  strikes  or  other  disorders.  In  re- 
mote country  neighborhoods  where  people  had  gone 
to  spend  the  summer,  one  every  now  and  then  ran 
across  one  of  these  drab  uniforms  and  white  arm-bands 
— a  reassuring  or  sinister  figure,  according  to  the  point 
of  view.  Patriotic  and  public-spirited  their  service  un- 
doubtedly is.  They  saved  the  country.  Yet  the  con- 
tinued presence  of  an  extra-national  army  like  this,  a 
sort  of  permanent  vigilance  committee,  could  not  but 
sharpen  class  lines.  Democratic  conditions  seemed 
scarcely  possible  so  long  as  an  armed  minority  decided 
who  were  and  who  were  not  respectable. 


RED  TERROR  AND  WHITE  43 

The  less  direct  results  of  the  revolution,  the  legacy 
of  hatred,  fear  and  prejudice,  of  smoldering  revenge 
and  stupid  reaction,  may  be  left  to  the  individual  fancy 
of  those  who  observed  through  seven  years  the  phe- 
nomena of  war  psychology.  The  worst  of  foreign 
wars  is  something  from  without,  like  a  storm  or  an  at- 
tack from  wild  beasts,  before  which  one  makes  head 
as  best  one  may.  But  a  class  war,  especially  to  the 
conservative  side,  has  something  of  the  uncanny  quality 
of  an  earthquake.  It  is  the  ground  itself  that  gives 
way,  and  one  is  taken  unaware  by  the  servants  in  one's 
own  house,  one's  fellow  workmen  and  apparent  friends. 
This  probably  accounts  for  the  panic  fear  which  is  at 
the  bottom  of  such  reprisals  as  the  Whites  made 
in  Finland,  and  the  hatred  which  is  scarcely  distin- 
guishable from  fear. 

And  having  seen  what  merely  reading  about  a  war 
three  thousand  miles  away  did  to  mild  and  sedentary 
Americans,  no  one  will  be  surprised  to  find  a  Finnish 
novelist,  Mr.  Kianto,  for  example,  urging  the  killing 
of  Red  women  on  the  ground  that  when  "exterminat- 
ing wolves  it  is  always  better  to  kill  a  she-wolf,"  and 
that  it  was  "short-sighted  to  leave  those  unpunished 
who  by  increasing  mankind  bring  new  strength  to  the 
enemy." 

Conversely,  no  one  will  assume  that  the  Finns  are 
peculiarly  barbarous.  While  I  was  investigating  the 
class  war,  Promotion  Day — corresponding  to  our  Com- 
mencements— came  in  the  Helsinfors  University.  The 
University  is  in  the  center  of  the  town,  on  the  big 
square  by  the  Nickolai  church  (a  sort  of  Lutheran  ca- 
thedral) and  the  Senate  Building,  and  the  very  formal 


44          NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

and  serious  old  ceremony  became,  therefore,  the  event 
of  Helsingfors'  day.  The  young  men,  all  in  evening 
clothes,  with  laurel  wreaths,  which  the  young  ladies 
had  woven  for  them,  round  their  brows;  the  young 
ladies — fine-looking,  clear-eyed,  northern  girls — with 
laurel  wreaths  too,  stood  for  hours  with  their  parents 
and  friends  in  the  University  Hall  listening  to  Latin 
addresses.  Then,  two  by  two,  they  marched  up  the 
street  to  the  church,  for  another  formal  service  there 
— the  former  graduates  in  top  hats  with  broad  crepe 
bands,  like  undertakers,  marching  with  them ;  then  back 
again,  and  finally  ended  the  day  driving  around  town, 
still  bareheaded,  with  their  laurel  wreaths;  getting 
their  pictures  taken;  and  dancing  in  what  used  to  be 
the  Hall  of  the  Nobles  until  dawn. 

And  these  ministerial  looking  young  men,  with  their 
laurel  wreaths  and  white  ties,  and  the  clear-eyed, 
blonde-haired  girls,  and  the  solemn  old  gentlemen  in1 
their  undertaker  hats,  and  the  proud  parents  and  prim 
lady  teachers  in  lavendar — all  the  figures  in  this 
quaintly  formal,  God-fearing  picture — all  these  were 
Whites  I  It  was  their  class,  the  nice,  quiet,  kindly,  useful 
people,  who,  directly  or  indirectly,  were  responsible  for 
what  had  happened  in  the  prison  camps.  No  more  were 
most  of  the  Reds,  I  should  say,  hyenas  or  bandits. 
They  were  just  ordinary  men  in  overcoats,  like  that 
row  facing  the  firing  squad ;  a  little  more  ignorant  than 
the  average  White,  more  or  less  pigheaded  and  re- 
sentful, and  bound,  whether  in  Finland  or  America  or 
elsewhere,  to  become  more  so,  as  long  as  nothing  real 
or  sensible  is  done  to  find  out  what  they  are  driving 
at,  and  they  are  treated,  instead,  as  beyond  the  pale. 


RED  TERROR  AND  WHITE  45 

General  Mannerheim  was  the  bright  and  picturesque 
sun  around  which  the  White  regime  revolved.  His 
rule  as  regent,  practically  a  military  dictatorship,  ended 
in  July,  1919,  when  a  Professor  of  law,  and  former 
speaker  of  the  Diet,  Stalberg,  candidate  of  the  Young 
Finn  or  Progressive  Party,  was  elected  President.  His 
election  became  certain  when  the  Socialists,  who  had 
eighty  seats  in  the  Diet,  withdrew  their  candidate,  Tan- 
ner, and  threw  their  vote  with  that  of  the  Agrarians 
and  the  Young  Finns.  The  conservative  Swedes  talked 
as  if  the  sun  had  indeed  left  the  world,  when  Man- 
nerheim left  the  stage.  Their  fear  that  fighting  was 
not  yet  over  was  to  be  respected,  but  some  of  their 
arguments,  especially  those  based  on  the  miraculous 
effect  of  Mannerheim's  sophistication  and  charm  ol 
manner  on  foreign  chancellories,  sounded  rather  silly. 

It  was  no  disrespect  to  Mannerheim,  nor  lack  of 
appreciation  of  his  services  to  Finland,  to  believe  that 
the  time  had  come  for  another  sort  of  leader.  The 
vital  thing  in  Finland  was  not  so  much  foreign  ad- 
ventures or  influence  at  St.  James  or  the  Quai  d'Orsay, 
as  the  restoration  of  normal  life  within  Finland  itself, 
and  the  healing  of  the  wounds  opened  by  the  revolu- 
tion. Mannerheim  had  become,  however,  unjustly,  in 
the  minds  of  a  large  section  of  the  Finns,  a  symbol  of 
the  White  Terror.  Stalberg,  respected,  at  any  rate,  by 
all,  essentially  the  civilian-republican  instead  of  the 
man-on-horseback,  was  the  logical  candidate.  His  co- 
alition government  was  bound  to  seem  weak  in  com- 
parison with  the  dictatorship,  but  it  was  the  normal 
next  step  in  the  slow  climb  to  solid  political  ground. 


CHAPTER  III 
FIRST  AID 

AN  importer  of  essential  food  even  in  peace  times, 
Finland  was  on  dangerously  short  rations  by  the  au- 
tumn of  1917,  and  efforts  were  made  to  have  the  block- 
ade lifted  enough  to  let  a  shipload  through  from 
America.  Flour  was  actually  bought  and  loaded  on  a 
ship  in  Boston,  but  commandeered  for  our  own  use 
before  the  ship  could  sail.  The  civil  war  and  the  shut- 
ting off  of  Russia  demoralized  trade,  industry  and  nor- 
mal farming,  and  a  good  deal  of  what  food  and  fodder 
remained  was  burned  or  otherwise  wasted  during  the 
struggle  between  Red  and  White. 

In  the  spring  of  1918  when  the  Red  revolution  was 
put  down,  conditions  were  so  desperate  that  the  Gov- 
ernment had  to  seize  for  food  about  half  the  rye  in- 
tended for  seed.  The  crop,  even  such  as  it  was  that 
autumn,  was  damaged  by  excessive  rains,  and  there 
was  a  deficit  at  the  end  of  the  year  of  some  200,000 
tons. 

It  began  to  be  a  literal  fight  for  life,  especially  in 
the  remote  forest  districts  in  the  east  and  north  along 
the  Russian  border,  where,  with  the  short  summer 
and  almost  Arctic  winter  night,  existence  is  rather 
precarious  at  best.  Even  in  Helsingfors  itself,  com- 
paratively comfortable  middle-class  people  lived  for 
weeks  sometimes  on  little  else  but  carrots  and  tea. 

46 


FIRST  AID  47 

Before  the  war  Finland  had  exported  dairy  products 
to  Russia  and  the  diet  of  the  peasants  consisted  largely 
of  bread  and  milk.  What  with  lack  of  fodder  and  the 
consequent  killing  of  the  herds,  there  was  no  milk. 
You  would  not  believe  that  human  beings  could  chew 
and  swallow,  let  alone  digest,  the  stuff  that  in  the 
country,  and  sometimes  even  in  Helsingfors,  did  duty 
for  bread.  I  have  seen  chunks  that  looked  as  if  they 
had  been  chopped,  literally,  from  a  door-mat. 

Bark,  straw,  sawdust,  moss  and  hydrated  cellulose 
were  among  the  substances  used.  The  better  speci- 
mens had  the  appearance  of  dried  horse  or  cow  dung. 
The  coarsest  one  could  scarcely  imagine  passing 
through  any  human  alimentary  system.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  they  did  not,  at  any  rate  satisfactorily,  even 
when  mixed  with  such  lubricants  as  linseed  oil.  When 
the  American  relief  men  arrived  in  the  spring  of  1919) 
they  found  children  in  the  forest  districts  as  pot-bellied 
as  so  many  African  pygmies.  Many,  left  without  a 
father,  as  the  result  of  the  revolution,  were  packed 
into  orphanages  with  adult  idiots  and  paupers,  espe- 
cially in  the  districts  along  the  Russian  border.  One 
lot  of  eighty,  suffering  from  rickets,  were  described 
as  "more  like  dispirited,  dying,  mangy  animals  than 
human  beings." 

The  bark  bread,  it  might  be  remarked,  is  not  always 
as  bad  as  it  sounds,  and  even  in  peace  times  the  forest 
peasants  were  accustomed  to  mix  some  pine  bark  with 
their  flour.  This  was  not  the  outer  bark,  but  the  soft 
layer  close  to  the  wood.  It  was  stripped  off  in  the 
spring  when  full  of  sap,  dried  in  the  sun,  ground  and 
mixed  with  enough  flour  to  hold  it  together  when 


48  NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

baked.  When  well  made  this  bark  bread  is  said  to 
contain  as  much  as  40  per  cent  nourishment.  Moss 
bread  could  be  digested  up  to  about  10  per  cent.  The 
wood-pulp  and  saw-dust  breads  had  no  nourishment. 

It  was  under  such  circumstances  that  the  first  food* 
ship  of  the  American  Relief  Administration  came  to 
Finland  in  March,  1919,  as  literally  a  relief  ship  as 
if  she  had  come  to  a  party  of  explorers  locked  in 
the  Polar  ice.  There  were  similar  expeditions  in  the 
other  border  states  and  similar  relief,  and  deep-laden 
American  freighters  were  poking  their  rusty  camou- 
flaged noses  all  that  summer  into  ports  all  the  way  from 
Archangel  to  Batoum.  There  were  ships  that  used 
to  carry  bananas  up  from  the  Caribbean;  ships  built 
in  a  month's  time  in  Great  Lake  ports  and  floated  down 
the  St.  Lawrence — and  lucky,  so  some  of  their  crews 
thought,  after  they  hit  the  Atlantic  gales,  if  they  ever 
lasted  out  a  month  at  sea. 

".  .  .  The  Western  Plains  discharged  609  tons  of 
wheat  at  Cattaro,  190  tons  of  wheat  at  Zelineke,  and 
proceeded  to  Constanza  with  6,642  tons  of  wheat 
flour.  .  .  ." 

".  .  .  The  Lake  Eckhart  discharged  1,500  tons  in 
Libau  and  will  discharge  1,254  in  Memel.  .  .  ." 

Reports  like  this,  by  the  score,  came  ticking  into1 
London  headquarters.  There  were  ships  in  the  Black 
Sea,  ships  creeping  through  the  Baltic  before  the  ice 
was  out  and  while  the  mine-sweepers  were  still  to  begin 
working;  new  ships,  battered  tramps,  all  carrying  to 
the  farthest  corners  of  Eastern  Europe  their  Dakota 


FIRST  AID  49 

flour  and  Iowa  pork,  Illinois  milk  and  Southern  sugar 
and  beans. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  retell  that  many-colored  story 
— a  drama  of  hunger,  vaster  and  more  terrible,  per- 
haps, than  any  Frank  Norris  could  have  imagined  for 
what  was  to  have  been  the  last  of  his  trilogy  of  the 
"epic  of  the  wheat."  Nor  is  it  necessary  to  indulge 
in  any  self-adulation.  We  had  the  men,  the  money — 
the  first  appropriations  were  for  $105,000,000 — and 
most  important  of  all,  we  had  the  food.  It  was  dis- 
tinctly up  to  us.  Except  for  a  few  millions  given  away 
for  children's  relief,  in  this  first  A.  R.  A.  program 
we  donated  nothing.  The  food  was  paid  for,  at  least 
in  promises  to  pay.  Amidst,  however,  the  jostling  of 
forces,  local  and  foreign,  and  the  cloud  of  advice  and 
pressure,  well-meant  and  sinister,  in  which  these  young 
states  had  to  find  their  feet,  these  A.  R.  A.  missions 
and  the  food  they  distributed — especially  in  the  first 
pioneering  days — were  oases  of  concrete  helpfulness. 
They  not  only  fed  the  hungry,  but  in  helping  restore 
normal  physical  conditions,  helped  also,  in  some  small 
way,  toward  preparing  the  ground  for  sane  politics. 
In  that  light,  some  mention  of  their  work  is  a  legiti- 
mate part  of  our  story,  and  an  American  who  saw  a 
good  deal  of  this  work  may  be  permitted,  perhaps,  to 
recall  the  satisfying  way  in  which,  on  the  whole,  it 
was  done. 

We  made  nothing  out  of  our  opportunity  except 
good  will.  There  was  no  attempt  to  use  our  power  to 
drum  up  future  favors.  Every  man  was  warned  to 
remember  that  he  was  there,  not  as  the  military  repre- 


60  NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

sentative  of  his  government — although  practically  all 
the  personnel  were  fresh  from  the  A.  E.  F. — but  as  a 
human  being  helping  the  helpless,  and  to  avoid  even 
the  appearance  of  ulterior  adventures  harmless  in 
themselves  and  in  other  circumstances  entirely  honor- 
able. At  the  same  time  every  endeavour  was  made  to 
accompany  this  altruism  with  hard  common  sense  and 
an  eye  to  facts,  so  that  as  soon  as  possible  normal  life 
might  be  restored  and  the  people  we  were  helping  be 
able  to  take  care  of  themselves. 

There  were  joy-riders,  of  course,  but  the  healthy 
spirit  of  humanity  and  service  with  which  Mr.  Hoover 
inspired  his  organization  was  felt  all  the  way  down. 
And  young  officers  whom  the  bleak  impersonality  and 
wasted  effort  inseparable  from  every  big  military  ma- 
chine had  given  a  mood  of  somewhat  ironical  resigna- 
tion— who  had  got  to  thinking,  after  a  year  of 
Europe,  that,  as  one  of  those  in  Finland  put  it  to  me, 
"there  was  a  'joker'  in  everything,"  recovered  their 
lost  enthusiasm  and  began  to  feel  at  home  again.  I 
shall  not  myself  forget  the  welcome  sight,  in  the  harbor 
of  Hango,  after  crossing  a  disillusioned  and  critical 
Scandinavia,  of  the  American  freighter  Philadelphia, 
with  grain  from  half-a-dozen  chutes  pouring  up  from 
her  hold  into  the  cars  run  close  along  the  dock  wall. 
Here,  at  last,  was  something  to  stand  on — proof  that 
the  America  these  people  had  believed  in  was  not  a 
thing  of  the  past. 

The  first  of  our  ships  reached  Finland  on  March 
25,  and  during  the  following  month — a  critical  one 
everywhere,  far  away  as  it  was  from  both  harvests — 
seven  ships  came  to  Finland,  with  25,000  tons  of  rye, 


FIRST  AID  51 

10,000  tons  of  flour  and  a  considerable  amount  of 
pork  products. 

A  food-importing  corporation,  including  representa- 
tives from  the  cooperative  societies  which  are  so  highly 
developed  in  Finland,  had  had  charge  of  food  importa- 
tion for  the  greater  part  of  the  war,  and  they  supplied 
useful  statistics.  The  Finnish  Government  contributed 
300,000  marks.  A  central  committee  was  formed, 
headed  by  Professor  Tigerstedt,  a  distinguished  Finn- 
ish physiologist  and  a  very  lively  and  charming  old 
gentleman,  and  including  various  public-spirited  Finns 
with  experience  useful  in  such  work.  This  committee, 
in  cooperation  with  the  Food  Ministry,  took  charge 
of  the  organization  of  sub-committees  and  the  dis- 
tribution of  the  food  delivered  to  it  by  the  A.  R.  A. 

Here,  as  elsewhere,  food  for  children  was  given 
away  instead  of  sold,  local  committees  working  with 
the  Food  Ministry  attending  to  its  distribution  and 
preparation.  Half  the  expense  of  transport  was  borne 
by  the  Food  Ministry,  half  by  the  Finnish  railways. 
By  the  end  of  June  about  40,000  children  were  being 
fed,  and  we  had  given  outright  (food  for  adults  was 
sold  at  cost)  about  $525,000.  Similar  work  was 
going  on  in  Esthonia,  Latvia,  and  so  on  down  through 
Eastern  Europe  all  the  way  to  the  Turkish  Caucasus. 

The  headquarters  of  the  work  in  Finland  was  in 
Helsingfors,  and  from  here  officers  went  on  tours 
of  inspection  to  the  remotest  parts  of  the  country. 
There  were  characteristic  training-camp  officers  of  an 
improvised  army.  One,  for  example,  had  just  started 
in  before  the  war  as  an  instructor  in  Romance  Ian- 


52  NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

guages  in  an  American  university.  Another  was  him- 
self a  Finn  who  had  seen  service  with  our  expedition- 
ary force  in  Mexico.  Another's  experience  included 
service  in  France,  several  years'  business  training  in 
Chicago  and  a  season  as  trombone-player  with  Ring- 
ling's  Circus.  He  picked  up  Swedish  and  the  difficult 
Finnish  as  if  they  were  American  dialects,  and  came 
back  from  tar-boat  trips  down  Finnish  rapids — a  stan- 
dard summertime  amusement  in  Finland — with  new 
and  wonderful  samples  of  bread  substitutes  and  stories 
of  food  being  hauled  by  man  power  up  rivers  so  wild 
and  swift  that  it  would  seem  as  if  boats,  men  and  all 
would  be  swept  downstream. 

The  head  of  the  mission  was  a  Grand  Rapids  in- 
surance man,  one  of  those  "regular"  Americans  who 
suffer  an  acute  nostalgia  when  word  comes  from  the 
country  club  at  home  that  the  tennis  courts  are  ready, 
and  yet  through  the  chance  of  war  and  the  real  power 
represented  by  the  possession  of  real  food,  hobnobbed 
quite  naturally  with  diplomats  and  soldiers  as  one  of 
the  big  men  of  the  land.  His  reports  suggested  anything 
but  the  shop-talk  of  the  trained  social  worker.  Writ- 
ing of  an  inspection  of  some  of  the  more  wretched  dis- 
tricts in  Esthonia,  he  said:  "It  had  not  been  realized 
before  that  200  women  could  have  so  many  children, 
nor  that  the  children  could  have  so  many  things  the 
matter  with  them.  .  .  .  the  peasants  have  not  learned, 
after  hundreds  of  years  of  this  sort  of  living,  that  one 
of  its  greatest  blessings  is  at  hand  and  free — namely, 
fresh  air." 

Returning  from  a  motor  trip  through  the  Finnish 


FIRST  AID  53 

timber  country,  he  reported:  "Everywhere  we  saw 
white  sheets  of  pine  bark  hanging  on  the  fences  to  dry. 
The  peasant  landlord  of  the  inn  where  we  slept  one 
night  was  away  with  a  load  of  pine-bark  which  he  was 
taking  to  the  mill  to  be  ground  so  that  it  might  be  mixed 
with  flour. ...  As  often  as  we  sighted  a  peasant  cart  we 
knew  it  meant  a  run-away.  The  horses  climbed  fences, 
jumped  ditches,  and  dragged  their  drivers  off  into  the 
woods,  with  the  two-wheeled  carts  bumping  at  their 
heels  and  their  excited  and  frightened  passengers  being 
yanked  along  in  their  wake,  spilling  disjointed  sen- 
tences in  the  disjointed  Finnish  language.  The  coun- 
try was  all  forest,  the  roads  up  and  down,  and  a 
breakdown  meant  death  or  insanity  from  mosquito 
bites." 

We  motored  out  one  summer  day  to  a  country 
schoolhouse  food-kitchen  in  the  pretty  timber-and-lake 
country  near  Helsingfors.  The  work  here  was  di- 
rected by  a  distinguished-looking  old  gentleman,  who 
had  run  a  food-kitchen  in  the  same  place  before  the 
Americans  came.  He  was  German  by  birth,  although 
he  had  lived  in  Finland  for  forty  years — an  old-school 
Liberal,  full  of  wisdom  and  comfortableness,  like  those 
who  migrated  to  America  in  the  middle  of  the  last 
century.  Some  of  his  relatives  had,  indeed,  gone  to 
the  States  he  said,  during  the  revolution  of  '48.  Two 
of  his  cousins  had  taught  in  a  medical  college  in  Bos- 
ton, and  another,  a  woman,  had  taught  in  a  school  for 
negroes  in  the  south.  For  two  weeks  before  the  Amer- 
ican food  came,  he  said,  it  was  literally  impossible  to 
buy  a  pound  of  flour  in  the  whole  district,  and  the 


54  NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

children,  who  walked  in  several  kilometers  to  get  their 
one  meal  a  day,  had  several  times  fainted  before  they 
could  be  fed. 

These  same  children  were  all  lined  up  in  front  of 
the  schoolhouse  now  to  greet  us — some  of  them  still 
a  bit  peaked — a  big  American  flag  floated  by  the  road- 
side, and  as  the  party  ascended  the  slope  past  them, 
the  little  bare-footed  boys  saluted  solemnly.  The 
inside  of  the  schoolhouse  was  all  fixed  up  and  fragrant 
with  balsam  and  wild  flowers,  and  mixed  with  this  was 
the  cheerful  smell  of  bean  soup.  A  big  cauldron  of  it 
— American  beans  and  flour  and  milk  and  pork — was 
lugged  in  by  the  teachers;  a  little  girl  with  a  record 
book  stood  beside  it  and  called  off  the  names,  and  one 
by  one  the  children  stepped  up,  each  with  its  big  bowl 
and  pail  and  much-fingered  food  ticket.  They  carried 
their  bowls  back  to  their  desks  and  went  to  it,  and 
most  of  them  had  some  to  take  home  besides. 

There  were  205  children  here,  from  80  different 
families.  One  hundred  and  twelve  fatherless;  the 
fathers  of  44  others  had  either  disappeared  or  been 
made  prisoners  during  the  revolution. 

It  is  not  convenient,  of  course,  for  all  blase  or 
grouchy  Americans  to  take  a  trip  abroad  these  days. 
Nevertheless  I  should  like  to  recommend  to  all  those 
left  cold  by  brass  bands  and  the  artifices  of  literature 
and  the  theatre,  who  think  that  life  has  no  thrills  left 
and  that  things  generally  are  going  to  the  bow-wows, 
a  food-kitchen  like  this,  three  or  four  thousand  miles 
from  home,  a  line  of  pale  children  with  bluish  rings 
under  their  eyes  waiting  with  their  bowls  and  spoons, 
some  nice  comfortable  women  bustling  about,  a  smell 


FIRST  AID  55 

of  bean  soup  in  the  air,  and  an  American  flag  float- 
ing lazily  outside  in  the  summer  sunshine.  .  .  . 

A  supplementary  program  followed  the  original 
one,  and  by  the  summer  of  1920  conditions  were  such 
— the  American  Red  Cross  had  meantime  come  in — 
that  the  A.  R.  A  could  discontinue  its  work  in  Fin- 
land. Bread  and  sugar  cards  were  still  used,  but  the 
supply  of  food,  even  of  white  bread,  was  comparatively 
normal,  and  Finland  began  to  be  a  regular  place  to 
live  in  again. 

TRADE  AND  FOREST  WEALTH 

The  new  republic  is  about  as  large  as  the  New  Eng- 
land States,  plus  New  York  and  New  Jersey,  or  about 
two-thirds  the  size  of  France.  Its  climate,  compara- 
tively warm  for  the  latitude,  is  similar  to  that  of 
Sweden.  More  than  a  tenth  of  the  total  area  is  made 
up  of  fresh  water  lakes — a  map  of  southern  Finland 
is  like  a  piece  of  lacework — and  61  per  cent  of  the  land 
area  is  covered  with  forests. 

These  forests  supply  most  of  the  fuel,  just  as  they 
do  in  northern  Russia,  and  wood,  paper  and  pulp  are 
Finland's  main  resources.  According  to  government 
statistics,  Finland  exported  in  the  period  just  before 
the  war,  more  cubic  meters  of  wood  than  Sweden, 
nearly  twice  as  much  cardboard,  and  about  three- 
quarters  as  much  paper.  As  more  than  one-fourth  of 
the  forests  are  owned  by  the  State,  it  seems  reason- 
able to  assume  that  this  thrifty  and  practical  people 
will  take  care  of  the  problem  of  reforestation  and  the 
scientific  development  of  this  all-important  natural 
wealth. 


56  NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

Sixty-six  per  cent  of  the  population  is  engaged  in 
agriculture  and  dairying,  and  before  the  war  the  Finns 
used  to  find  a  ready  market  for  their  butter  and  milk 
and  cheese  in  near-by  Petrograd.  They  used  to  ex- 
port, for  instance,  as  much  as  26,000,000  pounds  of 
butter  annually,  before  the  war.  They  always  im- 
ported, however,  a  good  deal  of  grain  and  flour,  and 
much  of  this  came  from  Russia  by  way  of  Germany. 
Oats, — which  ripen  even  in  northern  Finland — rye, 
barley,  potatoes  and  hay  are  their  principal  agricul- 
tural products.  Most  of  the  country  is  too  cold  for 
wheat.  The  Finns  could  feed  themselves,  undoubt- 
edly; could  exist,  that  is  to  say,  but  sugar,  coffee  and 
what  are  called  "colonial"  products  in  northern  Eu- 
rope, must  be  imported,  and  to  be  really  comfortable 
they  must  always  depend  for  a  good  many  things  on 
lands  farther  south.  And  the  mysterious  and  romantic 
workings  of  international  trade  brought  oranges  and 
lemons  and  Oregon  apples  to  the  market  on  Helsingfors 
Quay,  even  during  the  days  when  the  country  was  short 
of  bread  1 

The  mineral  resources  thus  far  uncovered  are  tri- 
fling, and  the  only  coal  is  the  "white  coal"  of  the  in- 
numerable rapids,  but  there  is  a  growing  and  important 
metal  industry — for  which  the  raw  material  must  be 
imported — and  manufactures  of  textiles  and  various 
luxuries.  Among  the  interesting  things  exhibited  at 
the  Finnish  fair  of  1920,  in  addition  to  a  Finnish- 
American  band  and  a  ship  load  of  returned  Finnish- 
Americans,  were  the  fine  furniture  and  the  homemade 
Finnish  rugs  and  linen. 

Finland's  nearness  to  Russia  will  always  give  it  an 


FIRST  AID  57 

important  carrying  trade,  and  its  delightful  summer 
climate  and  the  charm  of  its  countless  unspoiled  lakes 
will  make  it  more  and  more  sought  as  a  vacation  place. 
As  Europe  settles  down  to  normal  life  the  tourist  trade 
will  become  a  not  negligible  consideration. 

Characteristic  of  the  country  is  the  extent  and  suc- 
cess of  its  various  cooperatives.  Started  in  1901,  they 
spread  rapidly,  and  in  1919  there  were  3,135  societies, 
which  the  government  statisticians  described  as  "co- 
operative." There  were  societies  for  agricultural 
credit,  for  the  sale  of  eggs  and  butter,  for  the  pur- 
chase of  farm  machinery,  for  supplying  city  people 
with  provisions  of  all  sorts.  The  turn-over  of  the 
"Finnish  Cooperative  Wholesale  Society"  in  1919, 
was,  for  instance,  205,000,000  marks;  of  the  "Valio 
Butter  Export  Cooperative  Society,"  105,000,000 
marks;  of  the  "Hankkija  Agricultural  Cooperative 
Society,"  156,000,000  marks.  (The  value  of  a  mark, 
equivalent  to  a  franc  in  peace  time,  had,  of  course, 
a  good  deal  depreciated.)  The  "Elanto  Society's" 
restaurants  and  shops  are  among  the  characteristic 
furnishings  of  Helsingfors.  Elanto  owns  about  30 
establishments  in  the  towns,  two  large  farms,  a  model 
steam  bakery,  a  dairy,  a  factory  for  drying  vegetables, 
saddlery  and  tailoring  shops,  and  various  cafes,  restau- 
rants, groceries  and  small  bakeries.  Its  restaurants  in 
Helsingfors,  all  spotlessly  clean,  are  of  two  classes, 
the  one  somewhat  more  luxurious  than  the  other,  and 
one  of  its  restaurants  for  workingmen  is  said  to  be 
the  largest  of  the  sort  in  Europe. 

The  revolution  and  the  closing  up  of  Russia,  as  has 
already  been  remarked,  paralyzed  industry  and  trade. 


58  NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

Not  a  pound  of  paper  went  abroad  in  1918  from  Jan- 
uary to  July.  New  connections  had  to  be  built  up  in 
the  West  and  these  were  hindered,  not  merely  by  dis- 
tance and  lack  of  shipping,  but  by  the  distrust  of  a 
state  so  close  to  Bolshevik  Russia.  Not  even  the 
"Whitest"  Finnish  banker  or  manufacturer  could  visit 
the  United  States,  for  instance,  in  1919  and  the  early 
part  of  1920,  without  special  individual  permission 
from  the  State  Department.  Slowly  the  new  market 
was  made.  More  than  48,000  tons  of  paper  went 
abroad  in  1919.  In  the  first  five  months  of  1920  this 
figure  had  already  been  passed. 

These  amounts  may  not  seem  startling,  but  to  those 
who  know  these  Baltic  countries,  and  how  they  had 
been  fairly  fainting  for  exports  to  pay  for  their  in- 
dispensable imports,  and  lift  a  bit  somehow  their  all 
but  impossible  rate  of  exchange;  who  had  seen  eco- 
nomic illness  worked  out  in  terms  of  half-starved  chil- 
dren, of  families  used  to  comforts  grubbing  along  in 
half-heated  rooms  and  made-over  clothes,  the  sight 
of  a  deep-laden  freighter  moving  out  to  sea,  was  as 
exciting  as  seeing  the  color  creep  back  into  the  face 
of  an  invalid  friend. 

We  watched  a  big  gray  freighter  thus  sail  out  of 
Helsingfors  harbor  in  the  summer  of  1920,  loaded 
with  paper  for  South  America.  Thanks  to  direct 
steamers  and  comparative  lack  of  competition,  some 
of  the  earlier  shipments  went  as  far  afield  as  that.  The 
promenaders  in  the  Esplanade  studied  her  with  some- 
what the  same  wistful  interest  that  the  dwellers  in 
a  prairie  village  bestow  on  the  daily  flight  of  the 
Overland  Express.  People  speculated  on  her  cargo 


FIRST  AID  59 

and  destination.  And  those  of  us  who  knew  could 
amuse  ourselves  with  the  fancy  that  trees  cut  in 
sombre  forests,  on  the  edge  of  the  Arctic  Circle,  were 
going  to  end  in  newspapers  printed  in  Portugese,  and 
held  in  long  slim  brown  fingers,  and  read  in  the  blaz- 
ing sunlight  and  languid  airs  of  Santos  or  Rio. 


CHAPTER  IV 
THE  ESTHONIAN  WORM  TURNS 

THE  ancient  city  of  Reval  has  stood  at  the  western 
entrance  to  the  Gulf  of  Finland  for  seven  hundred 
years.  Just  across  the  Gulf  on  the  north  shore,  four 
or  five  hours  away  by  the  little  steamers  that  cross 
thrice  a  week,  is  Helsingfors.  In  the  old  Russian 
days,  when  Russia  held  both  sides  of  the  Gulf,  Helsing- 
fors and  Reval  and  the  fleets  that  hovered  between 
them,  guarded  the  outer  ocean  gate  to  Petrograd. 

As  you  come  to  Reval  from  the  sea,  and  the  low 
Esthonian  coast  appears  behind  the  sentinel  islands 
of  Wulf  and  Nargen,  you  notice  a  round  hill  rising 
above  the  lower  town,  and  the  roofs  and  towers,  and 
presently  the  gray  walls,  of  what  was  once  a  medieval 
citadel.  Tall  steeples  cluster  around  it,  sharp  aspir- 
ing Gothic  spires,  that  recall  Gustavus  Adolphus  and 
Charles  Twelfth  (one  of  the  old  churches  is  called 
"Karl's  Kirche"),  the  Danish  and  Swedish  occupations, 
and  the  Protestant-Lutheran  faith  of  most  of  the  peo- 
ple. In  the  very  center  of  these  tall  spires,  on  the  top 
of  the  hill,  shine  the  exotic  golden  domes  of  an  ortho- 
dox Russian  church — these  clustered,  beet-shaped, 
half-oriental  domes  which  shine  above  the  Kremlin 
and  lift  their  riotous  green  and  indigo  and  sky-blue 
over  every  Russian  landscape. 

They  and  the  spires  and  citadel  wall  about  them 

60 


THE  ESTHONIAN  WORM  TURNS          61 

tell  part  of  Esthonia's  story — of  the  Teutonic  Order 
which  took  these  Baltic  lands  in  the  middle  ages; 
the  Germanic  "Bait  barons"  who  inherited  them;  Im- 
perial Russia  reaching  out  to  the  West  ever  since  the 
great  Peter  opened  his  window  on  Europe, — 
indeed,  ever  since  the  first  invasion  of  Ivan  the  Terri- 
ble. The  spires  shut  in  the  gilded  domes,  but  they 
glisten  there  in  the  center,  alone,  and  as  it  were,  a  little 
insolently,  as  if  to  remind  the  world,  as  Mr.  Sazonov 
and  his  friends  now  and  then  remind  it  in  Paris  and 
elsewhere,  that  old  Russia  is  still  watching  what  once 
was  hers. 

Climbing  up  through  the  twisting,  cobble-stoned 
streets  of  the  citadel  you  find  that  the  Russian  church 
is  almost  vulgarly  new,  but  the  Lutheran  church  on  the 
very  summit  near-by  is  old  as  the  hills,  and  in  it,  from 
a  high  Gothic  pulpit,  a  pastor  preaches  in  German 
to  a  congregation  sitting  beneath  walls  hung  with 
tattered  battle-flags,  and  the  heavy,  carved,  coats-of- 
arms  of  the  Baltic  noblesse.  They  themselves  live — 
or  did,  until  yesterday — in  the  houses  round  about; 
stone  houses,  with  thick  walls  and  deep  windows, 
guarded  sometimes  by  iron  bars.  Plain  as  so  many 
warehouses  from  without,  within  are  spacious  rooms 
filled  with  family  portraits,  and  old  furniture,  and  now 
and  then  a  ball-room  with  parquetry  floor  and  mirrors 
and  glass  chandeliers.  Shut  in  between  stone  walls 
you  forget  that  you  are  on  a  hill,  and  entering  some 
unpretentious  front  from  an  alley-like  street,  suddenly 
find  yourself  looking  out  of  drawing-room  windows 
from  which  the  cliff  drops  sheer  to  the  town  below,  and 
the  curve  of  beach  and  the  sea. 


62 

It  is  a  splendid  view,  intended  for  superior  persons, 
and  up  here  on  the  Domberg  they  used  to  live,  while 
the  lower  town  was  left  largely  to  commoners.  Al- 
though these  gentry  served  as  officers  in  the  Russian 
army  and  navy,  and  as  Russian  diplomats  and  courti- 
ers, and  owned  at  one  time  practically  all  the  land 
in  Esthonia,  they  were  neither  Russian  nor  Esthonian 
by  race,  but  Germanic  "Baits,"  German  in  speech,  and 
sometimes  in  sympathy.  And  as  late  as  the  spring  of 
1918,  after  the  Esthonians  (a  people  of  the  same  stock 
as  the  Finns,  who  make  up  the  majority  of  the  inhabi- 
tants of  the  country  and  had  always  done  its  manual 
work)  had  declared  their  independence,  the  Bait 
nobles,  speaking  as  the  "furthest  outposts  of  Ger- 
manic civilization  in  the  East,"  begged  Emperor  Wil- 
liam to  free  them  from  the  "Russian  yoke,  already  a 
century  old,"  and  signed  themselves  "Your  Majesty's 
very  humble,  very  obedient,  and  very  faithful,  Estho- 
nian Noblesse." 

In  the  country  are  the  estates  from  which  they  drew 
their  incomes — most  of  these  Baits  lived  on  their 
estates  the  greater  part  of  the  year  and  were  intelli- 
gent farmers — estates  handed  down,  not  necessarily 
in  a  direct  line,  of  course,  from  the  days  when  the 
Knights  of  the  Sword,  in  their  white  mantles  with  red 
crosses,  conquered  or  bought  these  lands  for  the 
Church,  or  for  themselves.  Sixty  per  cent  of  the  land 
was  theirs  before  the  war,  although  their  families  made 
up  only  about  seven  per  cent  of  the  population.  Until 
the  middle  of  the  last  century  all  the  countryside  was 
in  the  hands  of  these  large  land-owners.  The  Estho- 
nians themselves  made  up  about  ninety  per  cent  of  the 


A  VIEW  OF  OLD  REVAL,  FROM  THE  SEA 


EARLY  WINTER  IN  REVAL 


THE  ESTHONIAN  WORM  TURNS  63 

people,  and  they,  serfs  until  1811-19,  and  most  of 
them  peasants  ever  since,  did  the  work  on  those  estates. 
It  is  they,  the  third  element  in  this  tangle  of  forces, 
who  now  hold  the  whip  hand  in  Esthonia, — men  and 
women  whose  grandfathers  were  peasants,  who  are, 
perhaps,  peasants  still.  Since  their  release  from  serf- 
dom (a  full  half-century,  as  the  Baits  point  out,  before 
the  serfs  were  freed  in  Russia  proper)  they  have 
developed  an  intellegentsia  and  small  bourgeoisie — 
folks  with  the  suspicion  and  stubbornness  of  those  long 
oppressed,  as  well  as  the  fresh  energy  and  ambition 
of  those  newly  arrived,  or  hoping  to  arrive  tomorrow. 
With  them  grew  a  sense  of  nationality,  and  when  the 
political,  and  later,  the  Bolshevik  revolution,  snapped 
all  the  old  Russian  ties,  their  smouldering  discontent 
burst  into  a  hot  flame  of  national  consciousness. 

LAUNCHING  THE  NEW  STATE 

In  the  half  century  before  the  war,  the  local  rule 
of  the  Baits  had  been  a  good  deal  shaken  by  an  ag- 
gressive Russification  of  the  Baltic  provinces.  Origi- 
nally the  Baits,  under  the  Russian  Governor-Generals, 
in  the  three  provinces  of  Esthonia,  Livonia  and  Cour- 
land,  had  run  things  pretty  much  as  they  wished.  The 
Diets,  representing  the  Corporation  of  Bait  Nobility, 
ruled  the  land,  and  the  Town  Councils,  consisting 
largely  of  Baits,  ruled  the  towns.  In  return  the  Baits 
were  loyal  and  efficient  servants  of  the  Tsar.  A 
Baron  Schilling,  for  instance,  was  Assistant  Foreign 
Minister,  in  1916,  under  Sazonov.  Prince  Lieven, 
whose  estates  were  in  Livonia  and  Courland — the 
provinces  southwest  of  Esthonia — and  whose  regiment 


64 

was  brigaded  with  the  anti-Bolshevik  army  of  Juden- 
itch  in  1919,  began  his  career,  as  did  so  many  of  these 
young  Bait  nobles,  in  the  Russian  Corps  des  Pages. 
Names  like  Rosen,  Manteuffel,  Keyserling  and  Pahlen, 
were  common  in  the  Russian  Diplomatic  Service  and 
at  the  Imperial  Court.  Some  of  these  Baits  had 
estates  in  Russia  as  well  as  in  the  Baltic  Provinces,  and 
time,  association  and  intermarriage  had  developed  a 
local  type.  They  were,  as  a  rule,  much  less  stiff  in 
their  manners  than  their  Prussian  cousins,  less  metic- 
ulous about  titles,  more  or  less,  as  they  say  in  the 
Baltic,  "verrusst." 

In  1867,  Russian  was  made  the  official  language  in 
the  Baltic  Provinces,  and  from  then  on  until  the  war 
there  was  a  steady  Russification.  Old  Bait  schools 
were  closed  and  Russian  schools  took  their  places; 
the  medieval,  but  economical  and  often  roughly  effi- 
cient government  by  squires,  gave  way  to  the  regular 
Russian  bureaucracy.  The  old  Bait  university  at  Dor- 
pat  was  closed.  And  there  was  a  certain  attempt  to 
play  off  the  Esthonian  peasants  against  the  Baits  and 
to  sharpen  the  former's  discontent. 

Until  the  Bolshevik  revolution,  however,  very  few 
Esthonians,  probably,  dreamed  of  anything  more  than 
autonomy  within  the  Empire.  Even  to  speak  Estho- 
nian on  the  streets  in  Reval  in  the  old  days  marked 
one  as  not  of  the  elect,  and  ambitious  young  people, 
feeling  themselves  looked  down  on  and  discriminated 
against,  were  likely  to  go  abroad.  This  tended  to 
make  the  educated  class  among  the  Esthonians  smaller 
than  it  must  inevitably  be,  although  measured  by  the 


THE  ESTHONIAN  WORM  TURNS  65 

mere  ability  to  read  and  write  the  Esthonian  peasants 
were  much  better  "educated"  than  the  Russians. 

In  1917,  after  the  political  revolution,  the  Miliukov- 
Kerensky  Provisional  Government  granted  Esthonia, 
including  a  northern  belt  of  what  had  been  the  prov- 
ince of  Livonia,  a  wide  autonomy  with  a  Provisional 
Council  as  the  supreme  local  power.  After  the  Bol- 
shevik coup  d'etat,  in  November  of  that  year,  this 
Council,  elected  by  universal  suffrage  and  regarding 
itself  as  the  legal  government,  declared  Esthonia  inde- 
pendent. Before  this  independence  could  become 
established,  the  Bolshevik  wave,  rolling  in  from  Rus- 
sia, and  rising  among  the  Russian  troops  in  the  little 
country  itself,  made  it  temporarily  impossible  for  the 
Council  to  act,  or  for  the  Constituent  Assembly  to  be 
held,  and  the  Council  retired  to  Stockholm. 

The  Baits,  meanwhile,  threatened  in  their  ancient 
security  by  Esthonian  nationalism  scarcely  less  than 
by  Russian  Bolshevism,  asserted  that  the  Capitulations 
of  1710  with  Peter  the  Great  and  the  stipulations  of 
the  Treaty  of  Nystadt  in  1721  made  them  the  only 
legal  authority  in  Esthonia,  declared  an  independence 
of  their  own,  so  to  speak,  and  asked  Germany  and 
the  Soviet  Government  to  recognize  it.  In  reply  to 
the  protest  of  the  Council  that  the  Barons  had  no 
right  thus  to  speak  for  the  people,  Great  Britain  and 
France  recognized  provisionally  the  Constituent  As- 
sembly (for  which  the  exiled  Council  stood)  as  a  de 
facto  independent  body  pending  the  final  decision  of 
the  Peace  Congress,  and  the  English  note  added  that 


66          NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

Great  Britain  "would  not  recognize  any  settlement 
contrary  to  the  principle  of  self-determination." 

The  Germans,  in  February  1918,  entered  Esthonia 
and  took  possession  of  it.  What  happened  is  variously 
reported.  The  Esthonians  assert  that  they  themselves 
ousted  the  Bolsheviki  and  established  order  before  the 
Germans  came.  The  Baits  generally  will  tell  you  that 
the  Germans  saved  Esthonia,  and  that  it  was  only  after 
the  approaching  German  troops  had  frightened  the 
Bolsheviks  away  that  the  canny  Esthonians,  in  the  in- 
terval between  the  departure  of  the  one  and  the  arrival 
of  the  other,  hastily  organized  a  provisional  govern- 
ment. The  knowledge  that  the  Germans  were  on  the 
way,  must  at  any  rate,  here  as  in  Finland,  have  weak- 
ened the  Bolshevik  morale. 

At  the  end  they  fled,  apparently  in  mad  haste,  blow- 
ing up  forts  which  had  cost  millions  and  sailing  away 
in  their  warships  without  firing  a  shot.  Stories  are 
told  of  how  German  cyclists  pushing  on  the  heels  of 
retreating  Bolsheviks,  ordered  sailors  who  were  hurry- 
ing supplies  off  to  the  fleet  to  bring  the  stuff  back  to 
shore,  and  of  how  the  Russians  obediently  did  so, 
and  then  paddled  off  to  their  mute  battleships.  The 
elaborate  fortifications  on  Wulf  and  Nargen  Islands 
were  blown  up,  and  east  of  Reval  scores  of  miles  of 
trenches  cut  through  the  rock  which  lies  here  just  be- 
low the  surface  soil,  concrete  magazines  and  abri, 
macadam  roads  of  no  use  whatever  except  to  haul  big 
guns  over — millions  of  dollars  worth  of  work  which 
had  never  done  anybody  any  good  (and  for  which 
French  bondholders  had  doubtless  partly  paid)  were 
left  without  a  tear. 


THE  ESTHONIAN  WORM  TURNS  67 

The  exiled  Council  again  addressed  the  Allies,  and 
in  May,  1918,  Great  Britain  and  France  re-affirmed 
their  provisional  recognition  and  also  received  diplo- 
matic representatives  from  the  Esthonian  Provisional 
Government.  To  further  protests  against  Germany's 
apparent  intention  to  annex  Esthonia,  Great  Britain 
replied  in  September  that  neither  Germany  nor  the 
Soviet  Government  had  any  right  to  dispose  of  the 
Esthonian  people;  that  Great  Britain  was  "in  full  sym- 
pathy with  their  national  aspirations"  and  "entirely 
opposed  to  any  attempt  to  impose  on  Esthonia,  either 
during  or  after  the  war,  a  government  which  would 
not  be  in  accordance  with  the  desires  of  her  popula- 
tion or  which  would  limit  her  claim  to  self-determina- 
tion." The  United  States  took  no  official  notice  ot 
Esthonia  but  the  declarations  of  President  Wilson  and 
the  Fourteen  Points  were  regarded  as  support  almost 
as  concrete  as  these  definite  statements  of  the  other 
Allies. 

On  the  signing  of  the  Armistice  the  Esthonian  Pro- 
visional Government  resumed  active  power,  with  Mf. 
Pacts,  an  Esthonian  banker  and  landowner,  and  the 
leader  of  the  exiled  National  Council,  as  Premier. 
With  the  retirement  of  the  Germans,  however,  the 
Russian  Bolsheviks  again  invaded  Esthonia,  and  this 
time  the  Esthonians  had  to  depend  on  themselves.  The 
stubbornness  with  which  they  defended  themselves  dur- 
ing the  succeeding  year  and  their  comparative  success 
in  putting  their  own  house  in  order,  meanwhile,  showed 
capacity  for  teamwork  and  considerable  political  sense. 
There  was  a  lack  of  everything,  but  they  contrived 
to  get  an  army  together,  nevertheless.  They  fished 


68  NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

breech-blocks  out  of  the  bay  where  the  Germans  had 
thrown  them,  they  got  some  old  cannon,  a  few  ma- 
chine-guns and  five  thousand  rifles  from  the  Finns  and 
hired  some  2,000  Finnish  volunteers  to  come  over  and 
help  them.  England  sent  munitions  and  a  fleet  strong 
enough  to  keep  the  Bolshevik  ships  close  to  Kronstadt. 
The  Baits  themselves  cooperated  and  raised  a  regi- 
ment of  700  men  which  all  through  the  next  year 
fought  side  by  side  with  the  Esthonians.  Finally,  the 
Northern  Russian  Corps  (later  known  as  Judenitch's 
Northwest  Army)  joined  in,  and  with  these  forces,  all 
available  Esthonian  man-power,  and  the  skill  of  the 
Esthonian  Commander,  General  Laidoner,  the  Bolshe- 
viks (peace  was  not  finally  made  until  early  in  1920) 
were  driven  across  the  frontier. 

With  a  good  part  of  the  man-power  at  the  front, 
fighting  still  going  on  and  economic  conditions  de- 
moralized, the  elections  to  the  Constituent  Assembly, 
on  a  basis  of  universal,  equal  suffrage  took  place  in 
April,  1919.  They  showed  a  decided  drift  toward 
the  Left.  The  Social  Democrats  led,  with  41  dele- 
gates, and  altogether  78  radical  representatives  were 
returned  as  against  42  from  the  more  conservative 
parties.  The  make  up  of  the  almost  Socialistic  Assem- 
bly was  as  follows : 

Delegates 

Social  Democrats 41 

Labor  Party  (radical  bourgeois) 30 

Social  Revolutionists  (In  Esthonia,  ex- 
treme radical)    7 

Peoples    Party    (middle-ground    bour- 
geois)     25 


THE  ESTHONIAN  WORM  TURNS  69 

Agrarian  Party  (Esthonian  land-own- 
ers and  conservative  bourgeois) ....  8 

Christian  Peoples  Party  (Protestant 

Clerical)  5 

German  Party  (Baits) 3 

Russian  Party •  i 

The  leaders  in  the  original  independence  movement 
had  been,  like  those  who  headed  the  political  revo- 
lution in  Russia,  itself,  comparatively  "bourgeois." 
The  President  of  the  Council,  Mr.  Pacts,  was  him- 
self an  estate-owner,  although  an  Esthonian,  and  head 
of  one  of  the  Reval  banks.  The  Agrarian  Party  to 
which  he  belonged,  which  included  not  only  estate- 
owners  but  a  good  many  of  the  more  experienced 
Esthonian  business  men,  returned  only  8  delegates 
to  the  Constituent  Assembly.  Mr.  Pacts  was  not  in- 
cluded in  the  new  Ministry  and  in  the  rapid  drift 
toward  radicalism,  he  disappeared  for  the  moment  as 
an  active  force  in  Esthonian  politics. 

This  drift  toward  the  Left,  very  natural  anywhere 
as  the  second  phase  of  revolution,  was  more  than  usu- 
ally inevitable  in  Esthonia.  The  inexperienced 
Esthonian  statesmen — and  stateswomen,  for  there 
were  six  women  delegates  in  the  Constituent  Assem- 
bly— took  over  a  country  swept  bare  of  nearly  every 
solid  thing,  from  mowing  machines  and  cigarettes,  to 
a  settled  frame  of  mind.  Successive  raids  and  requi- 
sitions had  taken  horses,  machinery  and  food,  and 
there  was  not  even  seed  for  the  1919  sowing  until 
the  A.  R.  A.  dragged  a  little  from  the  Danes,  and  even 
part  of  that  arrived  too  late.  Trade  had  stopped, 
factories  were  closed,  the  country  had  no  credit  and 


70          NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

no  present  means  of  getting  any.  What  few  exports 
could  be  raked  and  scraped  together  had  to  pay  for 
munitions  to  fight  the  Bolsheviks.  Money  consisted 
of  scraps  of  paper  of  various  colors  and  sizes,  brand 
new  Esthonian  bills  printed  by  the  Finns  and  worth 
nothing  outside  Esthonia;  tattered  "Ost-marks"  left 
by  the  Germans ;  promises  to  pay  issued  by  the  Juden- 
itch  army  and  dependent  for  their  value  on  the  taking 
of  Petrograd;  even  the  kopeck  stamps  used  for  small 
change  in  Russia.  Coin  had  completely  disappeared, 
and  when  I  gave  a  Reval  waiter  a  little  Swedish  ten- 
penny  piece  (about  two  and  a  half  cents)  he  kissed 
it  reverently  before  dropping  it  in  his  waistcoat  pocket. 

Close  by  were  the  Russian  Bolsheviks,  and  still  closer 
their  agents  or  their  Esthonian  comrades,  promising 
the  millenium  and  urging  Esthonian  workers  and  peas- 
ants to  throw  off  their  "capitalist  exploiters  and  op- 
pressors." Far  away  in  the  West  were  the  Allies,  send- 
ing little  concrete  help,  seeming  to  forget  the  strug- 
gling people  whose  independence  they  had  encouraged, 
or  remembering  them  only,  so  it  struck  the  Estho- 
nians,  as  convenient  cannon  fodder  for  their  uncertain, 
shifting,  but  never-ending  war  on  Soviet  Russia. 

The  exchange  of  notes  between  the  "Big  Five"  in 
Paris  and  Kolchak  in  Omsk,  in  June,  1919,  and  the 
statement  of  the  former  that  Kolchak's  reply  contained 
"satisfactory  assurances  for  the  freedom  and  self- 
government  of  the  Russian  people  and  their  neigh- 
bors," seemed  to  the  Esthonians  practically  to  leave 
them  to  the  doubtful  generosity  of  some  future 
counter-revolutionary  government.  During  all  that 


THE  ESTHONIAN  WORM  TURNS          71 

summer  it  was  feared,  and  not  without  reason,  that 
if  the  Judenitch  army  ever  did  take  Petrograd,  it 
would  not  be  long  in  turning  against  the  Esthonians 
themselves.  And  when  the  Baltic  winter  closed  down 
again,  with  the  Judenitch  army  routed,  economic  con- 
ditions still  desperate,  Allied  policy  toward  Russia  still 
vague  and  the  Bolsheviks  threatening,  it  was  plain  that 
if  any  reasonable  offer  of  peace  were  made,  the 
Esthonians  must  accept. 

The  radical  demands  encouraged  by  this  politico- 
military  situation,  by  economic  distress,  and  the  un- 
derlying social  and  agrarian  character  of  the 
independence-movement,  centered  on  the  land.  The 
parcelling  and  distribution  of  the  baronial  estates  was 
the  main  pre-occupation  all  that  summer  of  1919,  while 
the  Bolsheviks  were  being  fought  along  the  Narva- 
Pskov  front  and  the  Constitution  passed. 

Mr.  Pacts  was  one  of  a  small  group  of  Esthonians 
who  might  have  served  as  a  bridge  between  his  own 
people  and  the  hated  barons.  While  believing  with 
everybody  else,  the  Baits  included,  that  the  land  should 
be  more  widely  distributed,  he  thought  that  this  should 
be  done  gradually  and  with  compensation,  and  that 
the  trained  intelligence  and  administrative  experience 
of  the  old  aristocracy  should  not  be  lost.  Those  who 
succeeded  him  were  of  another  way  of  thinking.  Al- 
though mild  conservatives  like  Tonnison  held  back  and 
protested,  the  land  program  grew  more  and  more 
radical,  and  finally,  in  the  late  autumn,  a  law  was 
passed  giving  the  Government  the  right  practically  to 
confiscate  all  except  peasant  farms.  There  was 


72  NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

theoretical  compensation — the  subject  will  be  dis- 
cussed in  detail  in  a  later  chapter — but  it  was  so  small 
as  to  amount  to  almost  nothing. 

How  much  this  "land-hunger"  was  due  to  actual 
need  of  land,  and  how  much  it  was  made  up  of  ancient 
grudges,  the  propaganda  of  city  agitators,  and  the  hot 
breath  of  revolt  blowing  all  over  Europe,  may  be  a 
question;  the  demand,  at  any  rate,  was  real.  Time 
pressed,  the  Esthonian  majority  felt.  None  could  tell 
how  long  this  chance,  which,  a  few  years  ago,  nobody 
could  have  dreamed  of,  would  last — the  chance  to 
depose  the  barons,  and  build  up  a  nation  of  small  pro- 
prietors. Moreover,  something  had  to  be  done  at 
once  to  "meet  the  competition"  of  Soviet  Russia.  What 
took  place  in  Esthonia  under  the  cover  of  legal  forms, 
was  a  social  revolution  only  somewhat  less  complete 
than  that  which  had  taken  place  in  Russia  itself. 

TYPES  FROM  BOTH  CAMPS 

A  true  picture  of  the  state  of  things  existing  in 
Esthonia  in  the  summer  of  1919  cannot  he  had,  how- 
ever, if  one  assumes  that  the  type  of  person  who  ap- 
proves of  seizure  of  property  without  compensation  is 
the  wild-eyed,  homicidal  Bolshevik  so  often  depicted 
in  the  West.  A  more  calm  and  disarming  pair  of  blue 
eyes  than  those  of  Mme.  Ostra,  one  of  the  Social 
Democratic  members  of  the  Assembly  who  was  for 
taking  the  barons'  estates  without  compensation,  one 
would  not  ask  the  privilege  of  looking  into.  They 
were  the  blue  sky  itself.  With  her  strong  simple  fea- 
tures, blonde  hair  combed  back  from  a  wide,  intelli- 


THE  ESTHONIAN  WORM  TURNS          73 

gent  brow,  one  might  fancy  her  some  peasant  Joan  of 
Arc,  fresh  risen  from  the  fields  to  fight  the  people's 
battle.  She  was,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  an  "intellectual" 
and  revolutionist  of  considerable  experience,  with  her 
prison  years  in  Siberia — a  sort  of  honorary  degree  in 
the  old  Russian  days — and  a  picturesque  escape,  in- 
cluding a  fictitious  marriage  in  Moscow  to  get  the 
necessary  passport.  Her  present  husband  was  Mr. 
Oinas,  Esthonian  Minister  of  Interior  in  1919,  al- 
though she  was  generally  spoken  of  by  her  maiden 
name. 

I  found  Mme.  Ostra  after  considerable  wandering 
among  the  twisting  side  streets  of  Reval — most  of 
those  guiding  the  destinies  of  the  new  Esthonia  came 
from  the  country  or  the  side  streets — and  she  talked 
about  the  Esthonian  national  spirit  and  their  determi- 
nation never  to  be  Russian  again.  I  remarked — this 
was  before  the  law  passed — that  confiscation  of  the 
estates  would  be  a  hard  pill  for  Americans  to  swallow 
and  that  they  might  be  prejudiced  against  the  new  re- 
public and  say  that  the  Esthonians  were  mere  Bolshe- 
viks. She  knew  that,  she  said,  but  the  feeling  of  the 
mass  of  the  people  was  so  intense  that  if  they  were 
to  announce  now  that  the  estates  must  be  paid  for, 
that  the  people,  already  just  keeping  their  heads  above 
water,  must  mortgage  their  future  and  give  the  barons 
the  ready  means  to  continue  their  fight — it  was  doubt- 
ful if  they  could  hold  them  back.  They  might,  indeed, 
go  Bolshevik. 

A  more  conservative  Esthonian  to  whom  I  repeated 
this  remark  said  that  it  might  well  be  true,  and  she 


74          NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

and  her  party  were  to  blame,  for  they  had  made  their 
campaign  on  a  program  of  promises  bound  to  make 
trouble  in  the  end. 

Mrs.  Oletz,  a  thoughtful-looking  young  woman  with 
wavy  hair  cut  short  in  the  Russian  or  Greenwich  Vil- 
lage style,  was  also  a  member  of  the  Social  Democratic 
Group  in  the  Assembly.  She  spoke  in  English  (Ger- 
man was  the  usual  foreign  language  of  most 
Esthonians,  in  addition,  of  course,  to  Russian)  and 
mentioned  Mrs.  Pankhurst,  and  I  was  told  later  that 
she  had  spent  some  time  in  England,  among  those 
gathered  about  Prince  Kropotkin. 

Mr.  Martna,  another  of  the  Social-Democratic 
Assemblymen,  author  of  a  book  on  the  agrarian  ques- 
tion, and  one  of  the  delegates  just  then  back  from 
Paris,  seemed  more  doctrinaire  than  his  two  women 
associates  and  opposed  compensation  as  inconsistent 
with  the  general  international  program  of  the  Social 
Democrats.  The  peasants  would  be  helplessly  tied  to 
capitalism,  he  said.  He  quoted  figures  to  prove  the 
ingenious  theory  that  by  excessive  labor,  unjust  rent 
and  interest,  and  other  charges,  the  peasants  had  al- 
ready paid  for  the  land  long  ago.  He  talked  with 
dizzy  fluency  of  the  economic  possibilities  of  an  inde- 
pendent Esthonia,  and  suggested  the  sanguine  pam- 
phleteer rather  than  practical  business  man.  Mr. 
Martna  thought  that  Esthonia,  which  is  larger  than 
Denmark,  Holland  or  Belgium,  would  be  as  rich  a 
country  as  Denmark  in  another  twenty  years. 

In  this  connection  it  might  be  observed  that  Es- 
thonia is  a  moderately  fertile  agricultural  country 


THE  ESTHONIAN  WORM  TURNS  75 

about  the  size  of  Massachusetts.  The  round  granite 
rocks  of  Finland's  coast  gives  way  across  the  Gulf  to 
sandy  beaches,  and  behind  them  is  a  pleasant  forest 
and  farming  land,  improving  in  fertility  as  one  pro- 
ceeds southward.  In  so-called  normal  times,  Esthonia 
exported  flax,  wood-pulp,  butter,  potatoes,  cement, 
paper  and  a  great  deal  of  alcohol  made  from  potatoes. 
Esthonia  is  sometimes  called  the  Potato  Republic,  and 
a  distillery  for  turning  these  potatoes  into  spirits  is  as 
much  a  part  of  the  furniture  of  the  typical  Esthonian 
estates  as  is  the  silo  of  our  Middle  West.  There  are 
large  cotton  mills  at  Narva,  the  seaport  closest  to 
Petrograd,  and  in  peace  times  cotton  was  manufac- 
tured here  chiefly  for  sale  in  the  interior  of  Russia. 
At  Reval,  a  city  of  about  150,000  people  before  the 
war,  there  are  docks  and  shipbuilding  plants,  paper, 
cotton,  and  furniture  mills.  Other  Esthonian  ports 
are  Narva,  Pernau,  Baltic  Port  and  Hapsal.  While 
these  ports  are  not  as  indispensable  to  Russia  as  Riga 
and  Libau  in  Latvia,  they  are  doors  to  Europe  never- 
theless. According  to  Esthonian  figures,  Russia  took 
from  Esthonia  in  revenues  in  1912  more  than  $40,- 
000,000  and  spent  on  administration  nearly  $20,000,- 
ooo  less.  Esthonia  was,  in  short,  one  of  the  Russian 
provinces  which  is  said  to  have  a  good  deal  more 
than  paid  its  own  way,  and  this  is  a  fact  on  which 
Esthonians  rely  in  looking  to  the  future. 

At  tea  one  afternoon,  at  the  same  time  that  I  was 
making  the  acquaintence  of  some  of  the  Esthonian 
Social  Democrats,  I  met  one  of  the  Bait  barons,  a 
sprightly  and  amusing  gentleman,  who  arranged  an 


76          NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

excursion  for  the  following  Sunday  to  some  of  the 
nearby  estates.  He,  himself,  was  not  a  land-owner, 
but  had  served  as  an  officer  in  the  old  Russian  navy, 
and  we  were  accompanied,  when  Sunday  came,  by  a 
young  man  who  had  fought  with  the  Russians,  been 
a  prisoner  two  years  in  Germany,  and  was  now  acting 
as  Secretary  for  the  Esthonian  nobles. 

We  took  a  narrow-gauge  road  for  a  couple  of  hours 
out  into  the  country,  breakfasted  on  black  bread, 
boiled  eggs  and  milk  at  a  peasant  cottage  (the  poor 
woman  spent  half  an  hour  scouring  her  knives  and 
forks  before  she  thought  them  fif  for  such  exalted 
guests)  and  then  started  tramping  through  the  fields. 
The  baron  made  a  point  of  gossiping  at  length  with  all 
the  peasants  we  met — "he  knows  just  how  to  talk  to 
them  I"  confided  the  young  secretary — and  the  farm- 
ers gossipped  back,  complaining  volubly  of  the 
weather,  prices  and  life  in  general.  The  secretary  ex- 
plained that  peasants  always  complained,  but  that 
secretly,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  they  were  all  rich. 

Once,  when  we  tried  to  get  some  lunch,  the  facile 
baron  seemed  to  have  met  his  match.  We  had  come 
to  the  cottage  of  a  well-to-do  peasant  and  a  young 
woman  under  a  tree  ironing  a  summer  dress.  At  the 
baron's  request  for  bread  and  milk,  the  girl  merely 
shrugged  her  shoulders  indifferently.  They  had  sent 
all  their  milk  away,  she  said  pointing  to  a  barefooted 
girl  with  a  pail  disappearing  through  the  woods.  To 
his  suggestions  of  payment  she  replied  that  they  had 
all  the  money  they  needed.  Things  seemed  hopeless 
until  the  baron  suddenly  bethought  him  that  a  maid- 
servant of  theirs  in  town  came  from  this  neighbor- 


THE  ESTHONIAN  WORM  TURNS  77 

hood.    He  mentioned  her  name — it  was  the  girl's  own 
sister  I 

Whether  blood  was  thicker  than  wit,  or  she  be- 
came aware  for  the  first  time  who  her  visitor  was,  her 
manner  changed  instantly.  She  giggled  and  covered 
up  her  mouth  as  if  fearful  lest  we  might  see  within  it, 
did  a  sort  of  courtesy,  first  on  one  foot  and  then  on 
the  other,  ran  into  the  house,  and  in  no  time  we  were 
sitting  at  a  table  under  a  tree,  with  bread  and  eggs 
and  a  big  bowl  of  milk  in  the  center.  The  baron's 
spirits  revived  instantly,  and  he  pointed  out  how 
natural  and  peaceful  it  all  was,  how  busy  and  con- 
tented the  family  were — after  all,  this  was  real  liv- 
ing. 

And  so,  presently,  we  came  to  the  gate  and  the  tree- 
bordered  drive  leading  to  the  manor-house  of  Prince 
Volkonsky.  The  Prince's  family  is  an  ancient  one  and 
he  had  other  estates  in  the  Ukraine.  Russian  in  name, 
his  blonde  hair  and  blue  eyes  suggested  a  strain  of 
German  blood,  and  through  his  wife,  who  brought 
him  this  Esthonian  estate,  he  was  connected  with  one 
of  the  old  Bait  families.  A  relative  of  his  wife,  a 
famous  Chief  of  Police  under  the  former  Tsars,  was 
buried  here  in  the  family  plot,  on  a  shaded  hill-side 
overlooking  the  sea. 

The  estate — the  Esthonians  took  it  a  year  later — 
was  not  run  as  a  practical  farm,  but  used  merely  as 
a  sort  of  secluded  Garden  of  Eden  for  the  Prince  and 
his  large  family  of  children.  They  were  all  out  work- 
ing in  the  garden,  the  major-domo  said,  when  we 
presented  ourselves,  and  there  we  found  them,  in- 
deed, the  Prince,  very  fresh  and  tanned  and  healthy 


78          NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

looking;  bareheaded,  in  flannels  and  tennis  shirt,  quite 
like  any  New  York  suburbanite  playing  among  his 
radishes  on  a  sunny  Sunday  morning.  One  of  his 
sons,  a  tall,  handsome  boy  in  Russian  peasant  blouse 
and  big  Russian  boots,  came  up,  whacked  his  heels 
and  shook  hands. 

After  arranging  to  come  back  for  tea,  we  took  a 
walk  through  the  park  and  hot-houses,  past  the  mill 
and  over  the  water-fall,  and  as  we  walked  the  baron 
gossipped  about  Volkonsky  and  his  family.  He  had 
been  criticized  in  Petrograd  early  in  the  war  for  talk- 
ing German.  "I  am  the  Prince  Volkonsky,"  he  re- 
plied, "and  I  talk  what  language  pleases  me  1"  Very 
neat,  the  baron  thought.  An  elderly  princess  of  the 
same  family  refused  to  leave  Petrograd  now  in  spite 
of  the  dangers  and  discomforts  of  life  there,  because 
she  couldn't  travel  in  a  special  car  as  of  yore.  Vol- 
konsky would  not  permit  any  of  his  sons  to  join  the 
Bait  regiment  because  he  did  not  think  it  suitable  for 
a  prince's  son  to  be  fighting  Bolsheviks. 

One  might  have  expected,  perhaps,  from  such  an- 
tecedents, to  find  the  Prince  a  crustaceous  old  bird,  as 
truculent  as  an  editorial  in  some  reactionary  Prussian 
newspaper.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  a  more  modest,  un- 
assuming, hospitable  and  likeable  gentleman  you 
could  not  imagine,  living  a  similar  life  at  home,  with 
his  family  and  garden.  He  showed  us  all  over  his  two 
houses,  one  of  which  the  Bolsheviks  had  pretty  well 
smashed — statues,  vases,  china;  blotting  out  the  eyes 
of  a  marble  Venus  with  ink,  scribbling  a  mis-spelled 
"sveboda"  (freedom)  on  one  of  the  walls.  The  other 
was  full  of  books  and  old  paintings  and  old  furniture, 


THE  ESTHONIAN  WORM  TURNS  79 

and  portraits  of  court  beauties  and  quaint  souvenirs — 
an  account,  for  instance,  of  the  travelling  expenses  of 
the  royal  party  during  one  of  the  former  Tsar's  visits 
to  these  parts  years  ago.  A  comfortable  old  house, 
set  low  on  the  ground,  with  an  air  of  having  been 
long  and  pleasantly  lived  in. 

The  almost  shy  solicitude  with  which  the  Prince 
showed  us  about  and  had  us  write  in  the  big  guest  book 
where  Kaiser  Wilhelm  and  other  notables  had  already 
written,  and  apologized  for  his  tea  (for  even  he  had 
no  sugar,  and  "when  shall  we  ever  get  jam  from  Scot- 
land again!"  he  sighed)  was  as  charming  as  could  be. 
The  great  event  of  the  afternoon  was  the  arrival,  from 
Reval,  by  hand,  of  half  a  sack  of  American  flour  from 
one  of  our  relief  ships  there.  Everybody  ran  out  to 
inspect  it  and  see  that  it  was  really  white,  and  to  smell 
of  it  and  taste  it  and  be  sure  that  it  was  real.  When 
we  left  the  Prince  had  his  two  remaining  horses 
hitched  up  to  take  us  to  the  station;  thin,  angular 
brutes, — "like  Don  Quixote's  Rosinante!"  laughed 
Volkonsky. 

In  short,  even  Bait  barons  are  people,  and  while 
on  anything  that  touched  his  sense  of  prerogative,  of 
what  he  regarded  as  his  own  rights  or  the  duties  of 
inferiors,  he  might  have  been  difficult,  as  a  human 
being  among  his  friends  he  was  like  any  other  simple 
country  gentleman. 

The  estate  of  Baron  Stackleberg — Esthonia  is  full 
of  Stacklebergs — a  few  miles  away,  was  of  another 
sort,  a  practical  dairy  farm,  carefully  managed  by 
the  late  baron  to  yield  an  income.  An  enormous 
amount  of  work  and  money  had  gone  into  it,  for  these 


80 

lands  along  the  coast  are  as  bleak  as  New  England,  and 
one  had  but  to  look  at  the  country  roundabout  to 
realize  that  generations  of  patient  and  intelligent  cul- 
tivation had  put  these  shaded  drives  and  rich  meadows 
on  what  was  scarcely  more  than  a  skin  of  soil  on  top 
of  rock. 

Before  the  war  the  estate  had  had  a  herd  of  sev- 
eral hundred  dairy  cows  and  supplied  a  considerable 
portion  of  Reval  with  butter  and  milk.  Most  of  the 
cows  had  been  requisitioned  by  one  side  or  another, 
and  the  Government  had  already  taken  over  most  of 
the  estate  on  the  ground  that  it  was  not  being  suffi- 
ciently worked;  but  they  were  still  sending  enough  to 
Reval  so  that  the  manor  house  and  the  buildings  im- 
mediately around  it  had  been  left  and  here  the  Baron's 
widow  was  still  living. 

The  late  baron  had  been  very  proud,  so  my  guide 
said.  He  had  affected  a  tall  gray  "cylinder" — "like 
an  English  lord,"  and  declined  to  take  it  off  for  any- 
body. Whereas  Volkonsky  would  return  a  peasant's 
salute  from  a  quarter  of  a  mile  away,  Stackleberg 
would  simply  stare  straight  ahead.  "Chacun  a  sa 
methodef"  observed  the  baron,  sententiously.  Stackle- 
berg had  also  been  a  mighty  hunter  and  he  had  a  big 
book  in  which  he  kept  a  careful  record  of  everything 
he  killed.  Of  foxes,  which  are  shot  here  instead  of 
being  hunted  cross  country,  he  had  destroyed  enormous 
numbers. 

The  present  mistress  of  the  big  house — rather  more 
in  the  formal  palace  style  than  Volkonsky's  rambling 
villa — was  a  self-contained,  rather  sad-looking  lady, 
who  received  us  graciously,  apologized  for  the  bare 


THE  ESTHONIAN  WORM  TURNS  81 

rooms,  from  which  two  Bolshevik  raids  had  stripped 
nearly  everything,  and  soon  had  a  little  maid-servant 
bringing  coffee.  She  had  no  sugar,  either,  and  helped 
us  from  her  own  little  private  box  of  saccharine.  Even 
in  the  best  of  times  being  a  baron  on  those  bleak  coast 
lands  was  not  the  lotus-eating  existence  one  might 
imagine.  The  average  American  millionaire  would 
scarcely  find  such  simple  living  tolerable. 

During  the  first  visit  of  the  Bolsheviks,  she  said, 
when  a  Commissaire  had  taken  up  quarters  in  the 
house,  she  had  stayed.  But  the  second  time,  though  her 
intellect  told  her  to  stay,  her  "heart  and  soul,"  as  she 
put  it,  urged  her  to  run.  It  was  just  as  well,  perhaps, 
for  from  what  thr/  learned  afterward,  that  time,  she 
thought,  they  woul -1  all  have  been  murdered.  I  asked 
if  they  had  been  accustomed  to  live  on  the  estate  in 
the  old  days  and  she  said  they  spent  practically  all 
their  time  in  the  country,  only  going  into  Reval  for 
a  few  weeks  in  the  winter  "so  that  the  gentlemen  could 
pay  the  bills  and  the  ladies  go  to  balls."  They  were 
practical  farmers,  and  she  wondered  how  the  plan  of 
sma'l  holdings  would  work  out  in  Esthonia — for  the 
present,  at  least,  with  machinery  and  animals  so  scarce, 
it  must  necessarily  cut  down  production.  It  had  been 
the  big  places,  worked  with  a  certain  economy  in 
machinery  and  horses,  which  heretofore  had  supplied 
a  surplus  for  the  towns  and  for  export.  They  had  all 
thought,  she  said,  for  years,  that  something  should  be 
done  toward  a  wider  distribution  of  the  land  and  sev- 
eral suggestions  had  been  made,  but  the  Russian  Gov- 
ernment, which  had  done  everything  it  could  to  make 
friction  between  Baits  and  Esthonians,  playing  them 


82          NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

off  against  each  other,  had  put  through  nothing.  They 
were  ready  now  to  sell  a  third  of  their  property  at 
a  reasonable  price,  and  if  that  amount  of  land  were 
sold  from  any  considerable  portion  of  the  estates,  it 
would  supply  all  the  land  that  was  needed,  or  at  any 
rate,  that  could  be  worked. 

The  Baroness  Stackleberg  seemed  a  reasonable  and 
practical  as  well  as  cultured  woman,  and  one  could  not 
listen  to  her  without  feeling  that  the  destruction  of  the 
estates  and  of  a  whole  class  of  proprietors,  many  of 
whom  were  intelligent  farmers,  would  mean  more  than 
a  merely  sentimental  loss.  To  build  up  places  like 
this,  almost  as  much  had  been  put  into  the  land  as 
was  taken  out  of  it.  The  young  generation  of 
Esthonians  would  flock  toward  the  towns,  doubtless, 
here  as  elsewhere — how  many  of  those  demanding 
land  would  actually  go  to  work  to  farm  it  once  the 
estates  were  broken  up?  The  Bait  squires  really  lived 
on  the  land  and  loved  it  and  had  a  tradition  as  well 
as  a  selfish  interest  in  good  farming.  And  whatever 
social  benefits  might  result  from  a  wider  distribution, 
the  capital  and  leadership  they  supplied  were  not  going 
to  be  created  over  night. 

There  is  something  to  be  said,  in  short,  for  each 
side  of  the  Esthonian  triangle.  The  argument  of  the 
Russian  nationalists  that  Esthonia,  because  of  its  ports 
and  its  position  on  the  Gulf  of  Finland,  must  remain 
Russian,  is  stronger  here  than  it  was  in  Finland — 
would  be  unanswerable,  indeed,  if  Esthonian  independ- 
ence meant  shutting  off  the  greater  nation  from  the 
sea.  The  Esthonians  forsee  this,  naturally,  and  ex- 


THE  ESTHONIAN  WORM  TURNS  83 

plain  that  they  have  no  intention  of  bottling  Russia 
up;  that  their  ports  will  be  free,  that  Russia  might 
even  have  their  own  customs  zones  within  them,  and 
that  so  far  as  trade  goes,  the  new  republic  would  be 
merely  so  much  territory  to  cross.  Plausible  as  this 
may  sound,  its  practical  working  out,  human  nature 
and  nationalistic  prejudices  being  what  they  are,  would 
be  anything  but  easy. 

The  legal  case  of  the  Baits  is  even  more  clear.  While 
their  remote  ancestors  may  have  taken  land  from  the 
natives  as  ruthlessly  as  we  ourselves  took  land  from 
the  Indians,  the  present  generation  of  owners  acquired 
title  by  actual  purchase  in  good  faith,  or  inheritance 
through  generations  of  unquestioned  ownership.  They 
can  say  with  J.  S.  Mills  that  while  the  State  "is  at 
liberty  to  deal  with  landed  property  as  the  general 
interests  of  the  community  may  require,  supposing  al- 
ways that  the  full  market  value  of  the  land  is  tendered 
to  the  landlord,"  without  this  "expropriation  would 
be  nothing  better  than  robbery."  This  rule  was  not 
followed  in  the  French  Revolution ;  it  was  not  followed 
in  Russia ;  nor  is  it  being  followed  in  much  of  eastern 
Europe  to-day. 

If,  however,  one's  human  sympathy  goes  to  the 
Baits,  as  a  personally  innocent  aristocracy  ruined  by 
revolution,  what  might  be  called  one's  political  sym- 
pathy must  be  largely  yielded  to  the  Esthonian  majority 
and  their  natural  desire  for  self-government.  They  were 
encouraged  to  assert  their  independence  at  a  time  when 
they  could  be  useful  to  the  Allies,  and  they  feel  they 
have  paid  for  recognition  not  only  by  organizing  a 
government  but  by  their  blood.  It  may  be  that  guar- 


84  NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

anteed  autonomy  within  a  great  Russia,  may  seem 
eventually  the  most  expedient  solution  for  all  con- 
cerned, and  it  is  quite  possible  to  foreshadow  some 
such  arrangement  while  meanwhile  recognizing  the 
independence  of  a  state  which  must  look  out  for  itself 
for  the  present  and  for  an  indefinite  time  to  come. 
Whatever  the  final  solution,  Russia  must  accept  the 
fact  of  Esthonian  nationality;  the  Baits  come  down 
from  their  lofty  Domberg,  and  Esthonia  become  part 
of  the  modern  world. 


CHAPTER  V 
WAR  AND  PEACE  WITH  THE  BOLSHEVIKS 

THIS  local  drama  of  the  land  was  played,  it  should 
be  recalled,  against  a  wider  background  of  Russian 
Bolshevism.  The  Esthonia  in  which  a  peasant  ma- 
jority was  struggling  for  footing  and  an  aristocracy 
suddenly  finding  the  ground  literally  cut  from  under  its 
feet,  was,  in  the  Allied  strategy  of  the  moment,  merely 
one  link  in  a  "sanitary  cordon"  around  Soviet  Russia. 
All  through  the  summer  of  1919,  while  the  agrarian 
law  was  being  threshed  out  in  the  Assembly  and  es- 
tates being  taken  over  by  the  Government,  the 
Esthonians  were  fighting  the  Bolsheviks  on  a  front 
extending  all  the  way  from  Narva  to  Pskov,  and  the 
law  was  finally  passed  just  as  the  anti-Bolshevik  army 
of  the  Russian  General  Judenitch,  which  had  fought 
with  the  Esthonians,  was  being  flung  back  from  Pet- 
rograd. 

The  Russian  "White"  armies  faded  away  one  by 
one,  but  they  were  real  enough  to  the  thousands  who 
went  forward  to  kill  and  be  killed.  The  Northwest 
Army,  which  fought  from  Esthonia  as  a  base,  was 
doubtless  typical  in  many  ways  of  the  others  in  the 
South  and  East,  and  one  who  was  on  the  spot,  and 
even  stood  on  the  hill  at  Krasnicelo  looking  down  on 
Petrograd  when  the  Judenitch  force  expected  at  any 

85 


86          NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

moment  to  enter  the  capital,  may  perhaps  be  permitted 
to  recall  a  bit  of  the  atmosphere  of  that  strange  and 
tangled  time. 

Twice  during  that  year,  Judenitch's  army  was  in 
the  very  suburbs  of  Petrograd.  One  little  push  more, 
just  a  moment  of  team-work  on  the  part  of  the  varie- 
gated forces  in  the  eastern  Baltic,  and  it  seemed  that 
Petrograd  must  fall. 

Neither  the  push  nor  the  teamwork  was  forthcom- 
ing. The  push  did  not  come  because  Judenitch  did 
not  have  enough  of  the  right  kind  of  men  or  equip- 
ment, including  that  most  useful  thing,  an  idea  for 
which  to  fight.  His  officers  generally  knew  what  they 
wanted  and  some  of  them  were  capable  men;  but  his 
soldiers  were  mostly  peasant  conscripts  from  the  so- 
called  liberated  neighborhoods  or  prisoners  and 
deserters  from  the  Bolshevik  army  itself.  And  these 
peasants,  poorly  equipped,  had  to  attack  other  peas- 
ants, men  of  their  own  race  and  speech,  fired  with 
the  idea  of  "saving  the  revolution"  and  fighting  at 
last,  as  all  sorts  of  men  and  animals  will  fight,  when 
defending  themselves  in  the  last  ditch.  And  when  the 
Soviet  Army  actually  reached  the  last  ditch  in  front 
of  Petrograd,  its  leaders  were  able  to  call  up  rein- 
forcements from  other  fronts  to  outnumber  their  oppo- 
nents by  perhaps  five  to  one. 

The  teamwork  did  not  come  because  the  various 
non-Russian  peoples  of  the  eastern  Baltic  were  more 
interested  in  establishing  their  independence  than  in 
sacrificing  their  man  power  to  establish  a  Great 
Russia  which  might  turn  and  destroy  that  independ- 
ence ;  and  because  the  Allies,  the  main  source  of  muni- 


WAR  AND  PEACE  WITH  THE  BOLSHEVIKS     87 

tions,  were  either  dilatory  or  unable  to  do  what  their 
representatives  on  the  spot  wanted  done,  because  of 
active  opposition  from  their  own  labor  parties  at 
home. 

In  the  resulting  hodge-podge  of  motives,  personali- 
ties, and  events,  horror  and  farce  were  jumbled  in 
every  quantity  and  degree.  One  could  go  out  on  the 
Narva  front  and  see  Bolshevik  commissaires  shot,  or 
stay  in  Reval  and  see  a  new  "democratic"  Provisional 
Russian  Government  (for  the  purpose  of  placating  the 
Esthonians  by  recognizing  an  independence  which 
Kolchak  declined  to  acknowledge)  organized  in 
seventeen  minutes !  The  Esthonian  woods  were  full 
of  Russian  peasant  refugees  facing  a  winter  with  noth- 
ing to  eat,  and  the  Finnish  summer  hotels  equally 
crowded  with  soft-handed  emigrees  arguing  as  to  who 
was  the  best  ballet-dancer  in  1913,  and  spoiling  their 
digestion  with  chocolate  and  pirozshni. 

In  the  Baltic,  with  headquarters  at  Reval,  was  a 
British  fleet.  Britain  was  not  at  war  with  Russia, 
but  this  did  not  prevent  British  aviators  from  bom- 
barding Kronstadt,  and  one  fine  day  British  volunteers 
in  motor-boats  swooped  down  on  the  Bolshevik  fleet 
hiding  in  the  harbor  there,  and  sank,  in  addition  to 
other  craft,  two  battleships !  This  really  brilliant  ex- 
ploit— "the  best  show  yet,"  as  one  of  the  returned 
officers  told  me,  "better  than  Zeebrugge  I" — might  be 
described  as  a  major  operation,  yet  it  was  followed 
by  nothing,  and  strategically  seemed  merely  a  sort  of 
lark.  Real  enough,  however,  to  the  twelve  young  Eng- 
lishmen blown  to  kingdom  come  when  their  motor- 
boats  were  hit  directly  by  Bolshevik  shells.  And  the 


88  NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

same  England,  whose  naval  officers  thus  lived  up  to 
their  best  tradition,  solemnly  transported  field  batteries 
all  the  way  from  Mourmansk  to  arrive  without  breech- 
blocks; sent  machine-guns  to  Judenitch  without  cart- 
ridge-belts, and  was  constantly  unable  to  deliver  the 
Northwest  Army  what  its  Mission  had  promised  be- 
cause of  red  tape  and  labor  troubles  at  home. 

The  quaint  adventure  of  Mr.  William  Goode  was 
characteristic  of  that  curious  and  melodramatic  time. 
Mr. — or  Professor — Goode  was  an  energetic  little 
Englishman,  with  a  pointed  brown  beard  and  candid 
blue  eyes,  who  had  spent  most  of  his  life  as  the  prin- 
cipal of  a  young  ladies  seminary  in  the  suburbs  of 
London.  He  knew  something  of  Finland  and  several 
foreign  languages  and  was  sent  to  the  Baltic  as  a  corre- 
spondent for  the  Manchester  Guardian.  In  August,  he 
contrived,  after  many  difficulties  and  some  danger,  to 
get  through  both  fronts,  to  Moscow — where  he  spent 
a  fortnight  interviewing  everybody  in  sight — and  back 
to  Reval  again.  All  his  procedure  was  open  and  above 
board,  he  had  permission  from  both  Esthonian  and 
Soviet  authorities,  was  passed  back  from  one  Estho- 
nian staff  to  another,  and  lunched  immediately  after 
his  arrival  with  most  of  the  Esthonian  Cabinet. 

A  few  hours  after  this  luncheon,  he  was  taken  from 
his  hotel  by  the  Esthonian  secret  police,  acting  at  the 
instigation  of  the  British  Mission  in  Reval,  and  put 
in  a  prison  for  political  prisoners.  No  charge  was 
made,  nor  explanation  given,  nor  chance  given  him  to 
communicate  with  his  friends.  A  man  more  easily  dis- 
mayed might  have  remained  locked  up  indefinitely, 
but  the  ex-school-teacher  was  not,  as  he  put  it,  "born 


WAR  AND  PEACE  WITH  THE  BOLSHEVIKS     89 

an  Englishman  for  nothing,"  and  he  promptly  found 
means  of  getting  messages  out — one  way  being  to  drop 
them  from  a  window  when  a  mirror  operated  by  two 
amiable  young  ladies  across  the  street  flashed  the  signal 
that  the  coast  was  clear.  He  thus  sent  scribbled  ap- 
peals to  everybody  he  knew  in  Reval,  including  the 
Esthonian  Foreign  Minister,  who  was  naturally  some- 
what bewildered  to  find  that  his  luncheon  guest  of  the 
day  before  was  in  jail,  and  the  result  was  that  Mr. 
Goode  was  released. 

He  had  a  stormy  interview  with  his  own  country- 
men which  ended  with  an  invitation  to  accept  a  Brit- 
ish destroyer  to  ferry  him  over  to  Helsingfors.  Some- 
what ingenuously,  perhaps,  Mr.  Goode  accepted  the 
beau  geste,  and  departed  with  his  precious  pile  of  notes 
for  Finland  and  home.  Nothing  was  heard  of  him  for 
a  week  or  more,  when  finally  a  wireless  from  the 
British  naval  base  announced  that  "Mr.  Goode,  who 
has  been  conferring  with  Admiral  Cowen  on  the  Rus- 
sian situation,  is  still  conferring  with  the  Admiral !" 

The  case  had  attracted  some  attention  in  Parlia- 
ment, meanwhile,  and  about  a  fortnight  later,  Mr. 
Goode,  minus  his  memoranda,  was  landed  in  England. 
It  could  be  complained  of  him  as  an  investigator  that 
he  was  credulous,  and  inclined  to  accept  radical  the- 
ories and  programs  when  these  were  well  put,  with- 
out sufficient  correction  from  fact.  It  had  to  be 
admitted  at  the  same  time  that  he  had  done  a  plucky 
thing,  that  he  was  a  tireless  worker,  with  a  real  passion 
for  truth  as  he  saw  it.  Apparently  a  certain  distrust 
was  felt  of  what  he  might  write  were  he  permitted  to 
write  it,  and  the  British  authorities  therefore  adopted 


90  NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

the  effective  if  somewhat  Asiatic  method  of  censuring, 
before  he  had  committed  any  indiscretions,  the  writer 
himself. 

The  quaintest,  and  thoroughly  British,  part  of  this 
story,  however,  was  its  sequel.  For  custom  dies  hard 
in  England  itself  and  among  the  stubborn  English 
customs  is  the  habit  of  free  speech.  And  when  I  came 
through  England  a  few  months  later,  the  same 
thoughts  for  the  assumed  harboring  of  which  Mr. 
Goode  was  cast  into  a  dungeon  in  Reval,  were  being 
delivered  by  him  in  almost  nightly  addresses  in  various 
parts  of  England.  I  heard  him  speak  at  Holborn  Hall 
— mildly  and  objectively  enough — on  the  same  plat- 
form with  a  labor-leader  and  a  member  of  Parliament. 
The  latter  prophesied  that  Lenin  and  Trotzky  would 
be  received  one  day  in  the  streets  of  London  as  the 
representatives  of  a  recognized  government  just  as 
surely  as  they  had  recently  received  President  Poin- 
care.  The  labor  leader  said  that  this  was  all  very  well, 
but  that  he  would  add  that  the  time  was  not  far  distant 
when  the  President  of  the  British  Soviet  Republic 
would  be  received  with  similar  hospitality  in  the  streets 
of  Moscow  1  There  were  no  policemen,  as  far  as  one 
could  see,  in  or  about  the  hall.  The  audience  received 
these  observations  with  satisfaction,  sang  a  song  or 
two  and  went  home. 

THE  "WHITE"  DRIVE  ON  PETROGRAD 

The  Judenitch  army,   starting  out  as  the  Russian 

Northern  Corps  under  the  Esthonian  high  command, 

became,    after   the    Bolsheviks   were   driven   east   of 

Narva  and  the  Esthonian  border,  the  separate  Russian 


WAR  AND  PEACE  WITH  THE  BOLSHEVIKS    91 

Northwest  Army.  It  was  supposed  to  contain  about 
26,000  men.  General  Judenitch,  a  fiercely-moustached 
relic  of  the  old  regime  (he  had  commanded  at  one 
time  on  the  Caucasus  front)  remained  in  the  rear  at 
Helsingfors  or  Reval.  The  actual  commander  in  the 
field  was  Major-General  Rodzianko,  a  relative  of  the 
big  Rodzianko  who  used  to  preside  over  the  Imperial 
Duma.  The  A.  R.  A.  was  sending  food  to  the  "libe- 
rated" districts  as  well  as  to  the  Northwest  Army 
itself  and  it  was  with  a  party  of  A.  R.  A.  officers  that 
I  first  went  on  a  tour  of  the  Narva-Pskov  front. 

We  drove  along  the  coast  road  to  Narva  and  thence, 
across  the  frontier  a  little  way  to  Jamburg.  Peasant 
refugees  were  shuffling  westward  through  the  main 
street,  driving  their  pigs  and  cattle  before  them,  and 
the  clean  woods  on  both  sides  of  the  town  were  full  of 
their  gypsy-like  camps.  While  watching  the  pigs  poke 
rearward  under  our  window,  I  chatted  with  a  pleasant 
young  officer  who  had  served  in  a  Tcherkass  regi- 
ment— troops  like  those  on  which  Kornilov  depended 
in  his  unfortunate  adventure  against  Petrograd  in  the 
autumn  of  1917.  I  mentioned  Kornilov  and  Kerensky. 

"Bah! — that  Kerensky  1"  he  muttered,  in  evident 
disgust. 

I  asked  about  their  men — did  they  have  anti-Bol- 
shevik convictions,  or  were  they  merely  fighting  for 
something  to  eat?  They  began  he  said,  with  a  notion 
that  "things  weren't  good"  under  the  Bolsheviks;  their 
officers  kept  talking  to  them, — well,  you  might  say 
they  did  have  convictions  now.  About  a  fortnight 
later,  the  Bolsheviks  retook  Jamburg.  The  refugees 
went,  some  one  way,  some  another,  as  seemed  to  them 


92  NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

best.  The  brand-new  American  soup-kitchens,  for  the 
children  of  the  neighborhood,  were  abandoned.  And 
of  the  convinced  soldiers,  some  hundreds,  according 
to  the  Russians,  several  thousands  according  to  the 
Esthonians,  went  over  bag  and  baggage  to  the  Bol- 
sheviks. 

A  little  beyond  Jamburg  and  to  the  south  was  Rod- 
zianko's  headquarters.  The  group  which  came  out  of 
the  farmhouse  to  greet  us  might  have  stepped  from 
any  smart  Guard  regiment  of  the  old  days — pictur- 
esque young  aristocrats  with  vivid  Russian  faces, 
charming  manners,  and  that  air  so  many  young  Rus- 
sians of  their  class  had,  of  something  dashing  and 
brave  and  yet  not  quite  serious — as  if  next  minute  they 
might  all  be  going  to  paint  pictures  or  play  the  piano. 

There  was  much  heel-clicking  and  saluting,  all  done 
with  a  certain  half-smiling  air  of  detachment,  like  that 
of  virtuosos  playing  a  game  they  knew  well,  for  the 
pleasure  of  playing  it.  Delightful  companions;  ready, 
no  doubt,  to  charge  batteries  as  Russian  officers  did 
in  the  early  days  of  the  war,  like  knights  in  a  tourna- 
ment; and  facing  with  the  same  amount  of  understand- 
ing the  wild  forces  loose  in  their  Russian  world  and 
the  fanatic  seriousness  on  the  other  side  of  the  barri- 
cade. Most  of  them,  or  so  it  seemed,  were  still  liv- 
ing in  the  Russia  of  1914,  and  had  learned  and  for- 
gotten nothing. 

From  Narva  we  drove  southward — in  Russia  now 
— through  Gdov  and  on  along  the  shore  of  Lake 
Paipus  to  Pskov.  The  country  was  surprisingly  rich 
and  well  cultivated;  the  peasants  were  celebrating  a 
church  holiday  and  dancing  on  the  green;  there  was 


BELAKHOVITCH,  A  RUSSIAN  GUERILLA  LEADER  \Page 


PEASANT  REFUGEES  SHUFFLING  THROUGH  JAMBURG,  DRIVING  THEIR  PIGS  AND 
CATTLE  BEFORE  THEM 


WAR  AND  PEACE  WITH  THE  BOLSHEVIKS    93 

little  to  show  that  the  Bolsheviks  had  held  the  neigh- 
borhood until  a  few  weeks  before  and  were  soon  to 
hold  it  again,  or  that  the  human  life  all  about,  which 
seemed  so  thoughtless,  quiet  and  kind,  was  worth,  if 
it  collided  with  the  fears  or  hatreds  of  either  of  the 
enemy  forces,  quite  nothing  at  all. 

Any  officer  captured  by  the  Bolsheviks,  any  Com- 
missaire,  or  known  Communist  captured  by  the  Whites, 
might  expect  to  be  shot  out  of  hand.  "The  most 
beautiful  woman  in  Gdov,"  so  they  told  us  as  we 
went  through,  had  been  hanged  a  few  days  before 
by  Belakhovitch,  an  adventurer-commander  on  the 
White  side,  accused  of  giving  to  the  Bolsheviks  the 
names  of  former  Russian  officers  living  in  the  neigh- 
borhood. The  procedure  here,  if  somewhat  less 
thoroughgoing,  was  doubtless  similar  to  that  described 
by  a  young  officer  who  came  up  to  Reval  from  the 
Denikin  front. 

All  Bolshevik  Commissaires,  Letts,  Finns,  China- 
men and  former  Russian  sailors,  he  said,  were  shot  or 
hanged.  This  was  partly  because  they  were  thought 
better  out  of  the  way,  partly  because  they  had  no  spare 
troops  to  guard  them.  His  father,  a  rich  landowner, 
and  his  two  brothers  had  been  killed  by  Bolsheviks, 
he  said.  He  knew  the  men  responsible,  and  sooner  or 
later  would  kill  them  himself.  He  had  been  an  officer 
in  the  Russian  Baltic  fleet,  where  the  sailors  murdered 
a  good  many  of  their  officers  in  1917,  and  the  mere 
sight  of  a  sailor  now  made  him  see  red.  He  had  gone 
into  a  barber  shop  in  Reval  and  caught  sight  of  a 
Russian  sailor  getting  his  hair  cut, — he  saw  only  the 
back  of  the  man's  neck,  but  that  bit  of  flesh  made  his 


94          NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

fingers  itch  so  that  he  left  the  shop  lest  he  should  try 
there  and  then  to  kill  the  man.  He  had  run  across  one 
of  his  old  friends  in  Reval  and  the  latter  had  said 
that  he  was  almost  afraid  Denikin  would  take  Mos- 
cow, and  then  there  would  be  nobody  left  for  them  to 
fight.  Speaking  of  the  possible  use  of  volunteer  Ger- 
man troops  to  beat  the  Bolsheviks,  he  said  that  the 
unfortunate  result  of  that  would  be  that  while  the 
Bolsheviks  were  being  put  down  many  people  would 
be  murdered  and  robbed  and  then  the  people  would  say 
that  the  capitalists  had  brought  in  foreigners  to  crush 
them.  There  must  be  a  lot  of  murdering  and  robbing, 
of  course,  but  Russians  had  better  do  it  themselves — 
it  would  be  better  in  the  end.  As  for  Russia  itself, 
after  the  Bolsheviks  were  disposed  of,  they  would 
merely  go  back  a  few  generations  and  restore  a  con- 
dition of  serfdom — not  in  so  many  words,  perhaps, 
but  as  a  matter  of  fact. 

The  young  man  who  said  these  things,  not  noisily 
nor  with  an  air  of  showing  off,  but  quite  quietly,  across 
a  cozy  tea-table,  at  five  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  to 
two  ladies  and  myself,  was  a  handsome  youngster, 
with  a  compact,  athletic-looking  body  and  a  face  and 
manners  that  seemed  to  show  generations  of  gentle 
breeding.  He  looked  a  capable  man  as  well  as  a  gentle- 
man,— one  of  those  on  whom  one  ought  to  be  able  to 
depend  to  do  something  to  bridge  over  the  chasm  be- 
tween his  own  class  and  those  in  power. 

There  were  many  like  him  in  the  anti-Bolshevik 
armies, — fine  young  fellows,  naturally,  the  flower  of 
the  old  army  or  what  was  left  of  it,  so  obsessed  with 
that  peculiar  mixture  of  fear  and  hate  which  class-war 


WAR  AND  PEACE  WITH  THE  BOLSHEVIKS    95 

produces  that  it  was  hard  to  see  how  they  could  ever 
be  fitted  into  any  comparatively  peaceful  work  of  re- 
adjustment and  reconstruction.  Possibly  nothing  could 
be  done,  and  in  Russia,  where  assassination  had  so  long 
been  a  means  of  argument,  what  began  in  blood  must 
end  in  blood.  But  no  one  who  knew  what  counter- 
revolution meant  in  Finland  would  leave  untried  any 
chance,  even  the  longest,  to  avoid  it. 

Toward  sundown  we  came  to  Pskov,  the  shabby 
streets  of  which  were  brightened  with  samples,  it 
seemed,  of  every  uniform  in  the  old  Russian  army. 
We  were  put  up  at  the  house  of  a  retired  Colonel, 
whose  daughter  under  the  steely  glare  of  her  fiance, 
played  melancholy  Russian  romances  on  the  piano  for 
us,  and  as  we  ate  the  supper  we  had  brought  with  us 
(for  the  A.  R.  A  had  more  food  to  spare  than  any- 
body else)  we  could  look  out  across  the  river  to  two 
amiable  herds  of  bathers,  men  in  one  crowd,  women 
a  stone's  throw  away  in  another,  all  in  the  costumes  of 
Eden,  in  the  Arcadian  Russian  fashion.  The  next 
morning  two  of  us  took  a  swim  ourselves  before  break- 
fast. The  broad  river  was  a  mirror;  upstream,  in  a 
bend,  against  a  background  of  open  green  meadows, 
lay  a  snow-white  Russian  church  or  monastery,  with 
its  gay  little  sky-blue  domes — and  the  peace  and  fan- 
tastic beauty  back  of  it  brought  back  the  old  senti- 
mental Russia  that  Stephen  Graham  used  to  write 
about.  It  really  did  exist — at  least  in  the  subjective 
sense  that  New  York  sky-scrapers  become  cathedrals 
in  the  last  light  of  a  Jersey  sunset. 

After  breakfast  we  drove  out  to  call  on  the  much- 


96  NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

talked-of  General  Belakhovitch,  commander  of  this 
sector  just  north  of  Pskov.  A  private  soldier  in  1914, 
later  the  commander  of  a  rough-riding  troop  used  for 
harrying  German  communications,  he  had  fought  in 
the  Soviet  Army  and  later  gone  over  to  the  anti-Bol- 
shevik forces  with  a  good  many  of  his  men.  Half- 
patriot,  half-bandit,  he  was  another  type  altogether 
from  the  old-school  officers  already  mentioned,  and  in 
some  ways  more  useful.  He  had  dash  and  instinct 
for  handling  men,  got  more  out  of  the  latter,  and  got 
along  better  with  the  Esthonians. 

Hopping  into  our  motor,  he  whirled  us  along  the 
edges  of  his  extremely  informal  "front."  Coming  on 
a  herd  of  reserves  loafing  by  the  roadside,  he  was  out 
of  the  car  with  a  bound  and  a  cry  of  "Zdarovo  molo- 
dzle! — Good  morning,  Boys!"  to  which  the  men  bel- 
lowed a  grinning  "Zdrave  zhlaem!"  and  hastily  fell 
in.  Laughing  one  moment,  rapping  out  a  sharp  com- 
mand the  next,  asking  questions  and  giving  rapid-fire 
and  blood-curdling  advice  as  to  what  to  do  to  the 
"Reds,"  he  had  his  good-natured  Russians  on  their 
toes  every  second  he  was  there. 

Once,  after  motoring  down  an  unprotected  chaussee 
in  the  bright  sunshine  to  some  outposts,  we  asked 
where  the  Bolshevik  line  might  be.  "Right  there  1" 
said  Belakhovitch,  pointing  to  a  speck  of  a  man  not 
more  than  three-quarters  of  a  mile  away.  We  might 
easily  have  been  picked  off  with  rifles,  and  before  we 
got  away  a  shell  or  two  did  come  whistling  over  our 
heads. 

"For  usl"  cried  Belakhovitch,  evidently  greatly 
pleased.  At  another  place  the  Bolsheviks  neatly  timed 


WAR  AND  PEACE  WITH  THE  BOLSHEVIKS    97 

the  motor's  passage  through  the  woods  and  landed  half 
a  dozen  three-inch  shells  in  quick  succession  uncomfort- 
ably close  to  us,  as  we  came  into  a  clearing.  Belak- 
hovitch  chatted  gaily  of  his  success  in  drumming  up 
deserters,  and  the  most  capable-looking  officer  we  saw 
that  day — a  regular  army  cavalry  Colonel,  had  come 
over  recently  he  said,  after  negotiating  several  weeks. 

As  we  started  back  toward  Pskov  this  remarkable 
person  jumped  on  his  horse  and  tried  to  race  the  auto- 
mobile. For  a  time  he  actually  did  so,  standing  in  his 
stirrups  in  true  circus  style,  looking  back,  now  over  one 
shoulder,  now  over  another,  saluting  passing  officers 
in  magnificent  style,  although  our  speedometer  showed 
35  miles  an  hour.  As  he  seemed  quite  ready  to  kill 
his  horse  rather  than  be  overtaken,  we  finally  slowed 
down  and  let  him  have  his  way.  Nothing  at  all,  he 
cried,  as  we  came  up — that  horse  could  do  120  verts 
(about  75  miles)  without  a  whimper! 

Belakhovitch's  superior,  General  Arseniev,  a  pol- 
ished Guard's  officer  and  comrade  of  General  Manner- 
heim  of  Finland,  had  no  love  for  his  subordinate  and 
at  one  time  both  these  officers  were  trying  to  arrest 
each  other.  Not  long  after,  indeed,  Belakhovitch's 
chief  of  staff  was  arrested,  charged  with  counterfeiting 
and  trying  to  sell  out  to  the  Bolsheviks  and  "shot  while 
trying  to  escape."  Belakhovitch  fled  for  safety  to  the 
Esthonians,  later  went  to  Lithuania  and  in  1920  was 
again  in  the  field  as  commander  of  another  "White" 
army  which  Savinkov,  Assistant  Minister  of  War  in 
the  Kerensky  time,  organized  on  the  Polish  front. 

We  left  Pskov  after  lunch  and  started  northwest- 


98  NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

ward  across  Esthonia  for  Reval.  All  afternoon  it 
rained,  a  steady,  round-the-horizon  downpour,  that 
pelted  the  streaming  windshield  and  side-curtains, 
threshed  across  the  bending  fields  of  rye,  and  filled  the 
air  with  freshness  and  a  curious  sense  of  peace.  It 
was  as  if  Mother  Earth  were  trying  to  wash  away  the 
wickedness  of  her  foolish  children. 

We  met  no  one  but  peasants,  and  their  cradle- 
shaped  wagons  and  little  Esthonian  horses,  all  with 
their  home-made  look,  and  air  of  being  unlike  our 
noisy  chariot,  a  part  of  the  world  about  them,  and  quite 
naturally  growing  there.  Women  and  girls,  bare- 
footed, carrying  their  shoes  when  they  had  any,  or 
merely  barefooted  with  no  shoes  at  all,  pattered  by 
as  regardless  of  the  rain  as  their  own  sheep,  or  as  the 
nodding  rye  itself. 

The  motor,  drumming  through  the  mud,  came  like 
a  meteor  into  this  Arcadian  world.  Children  bolted 
like  rabbits;  once  a  woman,  associating  automobiles 
doubtless  with  requisitions,  grabbed  a  child  with  one 
hand  while  with  the  other  she  flung  shut  the  barn 
door.  The  sheep  waited  until  the  last  moment,  then 
wheeled  and  fled  in  a  body;  theirs  a  perfect  democracy, 
or  even  dictature  of  the  proletariat.  Cows  were  more 
individualistic,  and  sometimes  disdained  to  notice  us 
altogether;  horses  likewise,  although  generally  they 
were  terrified. 

The  light  peasant  wagons  showed  themselves  as 
practical  for  this  as  for  many  other  emergencies.  A 
ditch  ran  on  either  side  of  the  road  and  the  horses 
generally  dove  into  it  and  out  again,  or  jumped  it  al- 
together, leaving  the  wagon  to  take  care  of  itself. 


WAR  AND  PEACE  WITH  THE  BOLSHEVIKS    99 

The  fore-wheels  dropped  into  the  ditch  and  stuck 
there,  with  the  rear  wheels  still  in  the  road  and  the 
horse  prancing  on  the  opposite  bank;  or  the  whole  out- 
fit bumped  into  and  out  of  the  ditch  and  on  across 
the  field,  the  loosely  jointed  little  contrivance  none  the 
worse  for  the  adventure.  Sometimes  there  was  an  up- 
set. The  peasant  and  his  wife  simply  rolled  off, 
boosted  the  wagon  on  its  wheels  again,  and  no  harm 
was  done.  Often,  seeing  us  in  time,  the  woman  driver 
slid  off  her  load  and  covered  her  horse's  eyes  with 
her  skirt  or  the  flats  of  her  hands,  laughing  at  us 
the  while  as  if  she  were  playing  with  a  rather  unusu- 
ally big  sheep-dog. 

Everything  in  that  wet  and  fragrant  countryside; 
the  little  drab  houses  and  little  drab  horses  and 
wagons,  the  subdued  colors  and  lack  of  hurry  and 
stress,  belonged  to  a  world  in  which  steam  and  ma- 
chinery had  scarcely  entered  as  yet;  where  there  were 
almost  no  strange,  extra-human  forces,  nor  things  that 
man  could  not  control  with  his  bare  hands.  After 
hours  of  drumming  through  it,  always  hemmed  in  by 
soft  gray  curtains  of  rain,  one  became  a  part  of  it,  in 
a  way,  and  caught  something  of  what  must  have  been 
in  Tolstoi's  thoughts,  when,  after  a  life  in  cities  and 
the  army,  among  such  polished  officers  as  we  had  seen 
the  day  before,  he  "went  back  to  the  peasants."  The 
motor  car  and  all  our  heavy  and  elaborate  trappings 
for  keeping  out  the  rain  began  to  seem  absurd  and  un- 
real, and  one  looked  with  envy  on  the  peasant  girls, 
splashing  along  with  a  wisp  of  something  over  their 
shoulders  or  nothing  at  all,  and  turning  their  faces  to 
the  rain  as  calm  and  undisturbed  as  the  wheat;  and  was 


100         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

left  with  a  vague,  unreasoning  nostalgia,  by  stray 
glimpses  of  them,  disappearing,  single-file,  across  the 
fields,  toward  home  and  waiting  wood  fires. 

To  the  husbands,  sons  and  brothers  out  of  homes 
like  these — the  Esthonian  soldiers,  fighting,  after  six 
years  of  war  for  they  scarce  knew  what — this  home- 
sickness was  anything  but  vague.  Must  their  little 
country,  bankrupt  and  distracted,  be  destroyed  utterly 
in  order  to  save  the  Great  Russia  from  which  they 
wanted  to  be  free?  Murmuring  like  this,  growing 
stronger  as  the  weeks  went  on,  finally  brought  about 
the  withdrawal  of  the  Esthonian  force  south  of  Pskov 
back  to  their  own  frontier.  This,  together  with  the 
difficulties  in  Belakhovitch's  force,  gave  up  Pskov  to 
the  Bolsheviks.  Gutchkov,  War  Minister  in  the  Ker- 
ensky  Cabinet  and  a  leader  of  the  conservative  Octo- 
brist  party  in  the  old  Duma,  came  up  to  Reval  from 
Denikin's  army  in  a  last  attempt  to  get  the  Judenitch 
machine  going  again  before  the  winter.  As  the  result 
of  this  and  other  pressure,  a  new  offensive  was  started 
against  Petrograd  just  as  the  first  snow  began  to  fly. 

IN  SIGHT  OF  ST.  ISAAC'S 

This  drive  was  lost  sight  of  at  first  in  the  astonish- 
ing attack  by  the  Russian  General  Bermondt  on  Riga, 
and  the  fear  that  the  latter  and  Von  der  Goltz's  "Iron 
Division"  of  stranded  German  soldiers  (who  had  re- 
ceived a  promise  of  land  in  Courland)  might  be  plan- 
ning a  Russo-German  alliance  to  overrun  both  Latvia 
and  Esthonia.  It  met  with  surprising  success  and  one 
dark  afternoon  a  messenger  came  to  the  A.  R.  A. 
mission  in  Reval  with  a  telegram  from  General 


WAR  AND  PEACE  WITH  THE  BOLSHEVIKS  101 

Judenitch  stating  categorically  that  Petrograd  would 
be  taken  in  a  few  days  and  asking  that  all  available 
food  supplies  be  collected  for  the  relief  of  the  civilian 
population. 

The  statement  seemed  incredible,  yet  if  it  were  true 
there  was  no  time  to  be  lost.  Cables  were  sent  to 
London  and  Paris,  cars  were  ordered  for  what  food 
was  on  hand,  and  at  daybreak  two  days  later,  two  big 
American  army  trucks,  with  enough  beef,  bacon,  flour, 
sugar  and  cocoa  to  feed  several  thousand  children  for 
at  least  a  few  days,  were  already  east  of  Narva  and 
the  Narova  river  (which  they  had  crossed  on  a  pon- 
toon bridge)  and  rumbling  down  the  road  toward 
Petrograd. 

The  road  was  slithering  mud.  Beyond  were  sodden 
fields  where  rusted  grain  still  lay  unharvested,  and 
further  on  the  dark  walls  of  the  forest,  stiffened  as  it 
were  by  the  cold,  stark  and  funereal.  The  bitter,  east- 
Baltic  air  lay  on  overcoats  and  slickers  like  water 
around  a  diver's  suit  as  the  careering  trucks  drove  into 
it,  boring  through  the  least  crack  and  crevice.  Refu- 
gees were  already  pushing  hopefully  eastward,  the 
wife  driving  the  overloaded  cart  with  baggage  and 
babies,  husband  and  older  girls  scattered  into  the  fields 
like  sparrows  to  pick  up  as  they  went  a  few  armfuls  of 
soggy  grain.  Every  few  miles,  a  string  of  peasant 
wagons  drawn  by  scrubby  little  horses  and  driven  by 
old  men  and  women  bundled  up  in  sheepskin  shubas, 
trailed  past,  or  huddled  into  the  ditch  as  our  strange 
chariots,  each  with  its  tiny  American  flag  fluttering 
over  the  radiator,  drummed  past. 

We  had  hoped  to  cover  the  sixty  or  seventy  miles 


102         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

between  the  border  and  Gatchina  before  dark,  but  one 
truck  broke  down,  the  other  mired  itself,  and  we  finally 
had  to  shoulder  the  luggage  and  tramp  through  the 
mud  to  the  nearest  village.  A  squeaky-voiced  old  peas- 
ant watchman  was  scuffling  up  its  single  street  in  the 
dark,  shaking  a  sort  of  wooden  rattle  clapper,  to  let 
the  world,  good  and  bad,  know  that  he  was  coming. 
Was  there  any  place  we  could  spend  the  night?  Nyet 
— none !  Soldiers  everywhere.  After  many  words 
and  much  waiting,  however,  the  officer  in  charge  of  the 
reserves  in  the  neighborhood  was  unearthed,  and  pres- 
ently we  were  sloshing  through  the  mud  toward  a  light 
and  shelter. 

We  were  invited  into  a  snug  living-room,  the  house, 
evidently,  of  some  one  of  local  consequence.  There 
was  a  sofa,  a  big  round  table  with  a  kerosene  lamp, 
crayon  portraits  and  gilt  pictures  of  saints.  The  big 
china  stove  which  rounded  out  one  corner  of  the  room 
was  already  hot,  a  fresh  fire  blazed  in  the  open  fire- 
box on  the  other  side  of  the  partition,  and  the  cold 
was  further  shut  out  by  double  windows  and  at  least 
three  doors,  one  of  which  was  padded  like  an  easy 
chair,  and  fitted  with  a  wide  leather  weather-flap.  At 
home  one  might  have  looked  round  for  some  sign  of 
ventilation,  but  at  this  season  in  the  eastern  Baltic, 
after  a  day  on  the  front  seat  of  a  truck,  quite  enough 
oxygen  seemed  to  come  in  without  that. 

A  place  to  curl  up  in  was  all  we  had  thought  of  but 
our  hosts  insisted  on  getting  supper.  There  were  eggs 
and  bacon,  though  bacon  must  have  been  like  pearls  in 
this  war-swept  countryside,  black  bread  and  butter,  al- 
though butter  was  many  hundred  roubles  a  pound  in 


WAR  AND  PEACE  WITH  THE  BOLSHEVIKS  103 

Petrograd,  tea  and  a  big  steaming  samovar — even  a 
nip  of  vodka.  The  Colonel  in  charge,  a  careworn  man 
very  different  from  the  young  bloods  of  headquarters, 
told  what  little  he  knew  of  what  was  going  on  up 
ahead,  and  a  tall,  handsome,  long-haired  priest,  wear- 
ing the  usual  cross  on  a  long  chain  from  his  neck  and 
the  Order  of  Vladimir  on  his  chest,  stood  by  the  door 
and  watched  us  with  big,  soft,  interested  eyes. 

After  supper,  the  old  wife  and  her  tall  strong  young 
daughter  spread  fresh  straw  on  the  floor,  put  sheets 
over  that  and  even  pillows  with  pillowcases,  and  we 
all  lay  down  in  a  row.  There  was  one  pillow  short 
and  after  the  lights  were  out  the  younger  woman  came 
to  the  door  with  a  cushion  and  a  bit  of  linen  to  cover 
it.  Our  legation  attache,  never  averse  to  showing  his 
Russian,  assured  her  that  she  need  have  no  fear; 
though  there  were  eight  of  us,  we  were  all  old.  The 
young  woman  answered  briskly  that  she  had  no  fear  of 
us,  old  or  young,  and  added,  as  she  returned  to  the 
kitchen  that  it  was  unnecessary  always  to  think  of  men 
as  men — one  could  also  think  of  them  merely  as  human 
beings. 

In  the  dark,  at  last,  with  the  cannon  grumbling  in 
the  distance,  the  fact  that  our  security  in  this  warm 
little  island  depended  on  the  somewhat  uncertain 
stability  of  the  anti-Bolshevik  line,  came  more  clearly 
to  mind.  About  three  o'clock  in  the  morning  the 
Colonel  tiptoed  into  the  room  with  a  lighted  candle 
and  began  to  fumble  with  papers. 

"What's  up?"  somebody  whispered.  The  Colonel 
said  that  they  were  ordered  to  fall  back — 
the  "Krasni  (Reds)  were  coming."  "What!  .  .  . 


104         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

Hey — get  up!  Get  out  of  this!  .  .  .  Wha-a-t!  ... 
It's  the  Reds — the  Reds  are  coming!"  Wild  excite- 
ment. Matches  scratched;  flash-lamps  pulled  out; 
boots  pulled  on;  frantic  rustling  about  in  the  straw  to 
find  this  and  that.  The  Colonel,  calmly  gathering  his 
papers,  remarked  that  there  was  nothing  to  be  flurried 
about.  The  Reds  mightn't  get  close  at  all.  There 
were  bands  of  them,  a  hundred  or  so,  here  and  there, 
not  yet  rounded  up ;  as  a  precautionary  measure  he  had 
been  ordered  further  back.  The  wagon  trains  we  had 
heard  during  the  night  were  transports  moving  back 
out  of  danger  of  possible  surprise.  We  might  as  well 
go  to  sleep  again. 

Daylight  and  a  few  glasses  of  tea  brushed  aside 
these  visions  of  the  dark,  and  both  drivers  having  suc- 
ceeded in  getting  their  trucks  up,  we  pushed  on  toward 
Gatchina.  Through  several  dismal  villages  and  then 
the  landscape  changed.  We  passed  an  old  stone  gate- 
way, a  statue  or  two,  and  finally,  with  a  curious  stab 
of  familiarity  I  recognized  the  long  X-shaped,  high 
pole  fence  that  used  to  enclose  the  Imperial  game- 
preserve  in  Gatchina.  I  had  last  driven  along  it  on  a 
pleasant  summer  Sunday  in  1917  before  the  Bolshevik 
revolution.  Most  of  the  game  had  already  been  killed 
then,  but  the  kennels  still  had  at  that  time  their  packs 
of  wolf-hounds,  people  were  still  strolling  in  the  parks 
and  sunning  themselves  on  the  banks  of  the  lake,  and 
Gatchina  still  held  its  air  of  a  royal  pleasure  place. 

In  the  pale  sunlight  of  the  early  winter  morning, 
down  a  long  avenue  strewn  with  yellow  leaves,  through 
air  soaked  not  merely  with  the  melancholy  scent  of 
autumn  but  with  the  crowding  tragic  memories  of  what 


WAR  AND  PEACE  WITH  THE  BOLSHEVIKS  105 

had  come  between,  the  two  strange  trucks  drummed 
into  the  almost  deserted  town.  There  was  the  great  six- 
hundred  room  palace,  just  as  it  used  to  be,  and  the 
statue  of  Tsar  Paul  in  front  of  it,  outstretched  hand 
resting  proudly  on  his  long  cane,  and  here  too,  a  dreary 
little  cue  of  people  waiting  for  food ;  and  then  a  burned 
house,  still  smouldering;  a  couple  of  half-starved  dogs 
shamefacedly  tearing  at  the  carcass  of  a  dead  horse, 
and  a  dead  soldier  lying  face  upward  in  the  street. 

The  A.  R.  A.  officer  reported  himself  to  the  town 
commandant,  got  an  empty  house  for  his  own  quarters, 
and  before  noon  a  committee  of  sad-looking  men  and 
women,  in  cloaks  and  overcoats  patched  and  made  to 
do  for  many  winters,  were  arranging  with  him  to  start 
serving  lunches  in  several  schools  next  day.  I  was  told 
later  in  Reval  by  a  picturesque  old  Baroness  who  had 
fled  from  Gatchina  with  a  solemn  document,  asking 
foreign  governments  in  three  languages  in  the  name  of 
the  Tzar  to  treat  her  with  consideration — I  was 
assured  by  this  undaunted  old  relic,  who  firmly  believed 
that  this  ancient  passport  would  help  her  with  the  re- 
volted Esthonians,  that  the  Committee  chosen  that 
morning  were  nothing  but  Bolsheviks  themselves.  It 
was  "their"  children,  not  "ours,"  who  got  the  Ameri- 
can food.  Another  lady  assured  me  that  day  that  the 
committee  were  as  good  as  could  be  hoped  for,  and 
that  several  were,  indeed,  "good  monarchists."  It 
makes  little  difference  now.  Everybody  was  hungry. 
But  the  incident  was  characteristic  of  the  tangle  of 
jealousy,  prejudice  and  downright  lying  which  ingenu- 
ous outsiders  meet  as  soon  as  they  break  through  the 


106         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

Chinese  wall  round  Russia  and  start  in  to  separate 
the  sheep  from  the  goats. 

The  Bolsheviks  had  already  done  a  certain  amount 
of  public  feeding  of  children  during  their  time  in 
Gatchina  and  the  children  were  not  strikingly  under- 
nourished as  children  went  in  eastern  Europe.  Their 
general  appearance  was  better  than  that  of  some  of  the 
Finnish  children  I  had  seen  at  our  relief  stations  earlier 
in  the  year.  One  of  the  stations — they  were  going  full 
blast  by  noon  next  day — was  entered  by  a  dingy  pas- 
sage from  an  inner  court.  The  tables  were  packed, 
the  children  spooning  away  for  dear  life,  the  double 
windows  dripping  steam  and  the  whole  place  filled  with 
a  thoroughly  Russian  atmosphere  of  noise,  disorder 
and  f reehandedness ;  heat,  humanity  and  cabbage  soup. 

The  children  shouted  "Zdrastvitzye!"  (How-do- 
you-do!)  as  soon  as  they  could  see  through  the  mist 
who  was  visiting  them,  and  a  stubby-toed  youngster  in  a 
soldier  suit  was  brought  up  and  introduced  as  a  mem- 
ber of  the  First  Infantry  Corps.  And  what  did  he 
do  in  the  Army,  we  asked?  He  whacked  his  heels, 
saluted,  and  with  a  great  satisfaction  replied 
"Nitchevo  dyelayem!  Yem  khleb!" — (I  don't  do  a 
thing  and  I  get  bread!) 

At  another  kitchen  the  energetic  lady  in  charge, 
after  proudly  showing  the  new  white  bread,  led  me  to 
an  unheated  reception  room  where  we  shivered  and 
chatted  in  the  fading  twilight.  She  had  gone  to  work 
for  the  Bolsheviks,  she  said,  after  selling  all  her 
clothes.  There  was  so  much  graft  in  the  office,  she 
said,  that  she  had  protested  openly,  been  denounced  as 
a  counter-revolutionist  and  narrowly  escaped  hanging 


WAR  AND  PEACE  WITH  THE  BOLSHEVIKS  107 

— and  she  drew  her  finger  across  her  throat.  She  told 
of  a  man  lodger  in  her  house  who,  before  she  went  to 
work  for  the  local  Soviet,  had  come  to  her  one  day  and 
ordered  her  to  clean  out  his  rooms.  His  wife  was  ill, 
and  couldn't  do  it,  he  said. 

Black  bread  and  a  few  herrings,  turnips  and  cab- 
bages had  been  their  food.  Sometimes  for  days  there 
was  nothing  to  eat  but  nettle  soup.  They  boiled  the 
heads  of  herrings,  ground  them  up,  bones  and  all,  and 
made  a  sort  of  croquette.  Lowering  her  voice,  as  if 
some  shocked  Orthodox  might  be  listening,  she  said 
that  she  was  a  Christian  Scientist  and  that  one  of  her 
dreams  was  to  come  to  America  and  visit  the  Mother 
Church.  Riches,  she  said,  she  did  not  need.  She  had 
God's  love  and  her  faith,  and  these  were  riches  enough. 
As  for  that,  indeed,  was  not  Christ  the  first  Com- 
munist? 

As  she  talked  there  in  the  half  dark,  in  that  frigid 
room,  there  entered  an  elderly  lady  in  mourning.  The 
two  flew  into  each  other's  arms,  kissed  on  both  cheeks 
in  the  Russian  fashion,  and  stood  there  for  a  moment 
comforting  each  other  and  murmuring  something 
about  how  happy  the  older  woman  must  be  at  what  had 
happened  the  day  before.  Her  husband,  it  seemed,  a 
retired  General,  had  been  imprisoned  by  the  Bolshe- 
viks, but  recently  released,  and  when  the  White  forces 
took  Gatchina  the  old  officer  had  died  of  joy.  It  was 
that  which  made  the  older  woman  so  happy — that  her 
husband,  instead  of  perishing  in  prison  had  been  spared 
to  die  and  be  buried  with  honor  among  his  own  people. 
They  sat  down  and  went  on  to  talk  of  other  things — 
of  those  who  had  fled  as  the  White  Army  came,  and 


108        NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

of  one  young  woman  whom  they  thought  had  been 
executed.  It  was  a  pity  that  she  should  be  shot,  she 
was  a  nice  girl  in  many  ways,  but  of  course  after  she 
had  married  that  Commissaire.  .  .  And  that  dark  room, 
and  the  cold,  and  the  woman  in  black,  and  their  strange 
talk  of  fear  and  suspicion  and  death,  and  almost 
stranger  joy  over  what  had  happened  the  day  before, 
was,  one  felt,  but  a  thread,  an  outer  corner,  of  a  vast 
black  pall,  a  nightmare  become  real,  that  hung  over 
millions  of  lives  in  Russia. 

Judenitch's  troops  were  advancing  over  a  fan- 
shaped  area  centering  on  Petrograd.  The  Bolshevik 
right  flank  ran  along  the  shore  of  the  Gulf  of  Finland 
straight  westward  from  the  capital;  their  left,  south- 
ward from  Petrograd  along  the  railways  leading  to 
Moscow.  The  task  of  the  Whites  was  to  cut  both 
these  lines,  and  particularly  to  cut  the  railroad,  so  that 
reinforcements  could  not  come  up  from  the  South. 
When  we  reached  Gatchina  they  were  supposed  to 
have  cut  through  to  the  Gulf  near  Strelna,  leaving 
a  Bolshevik  force  west  of  that,  bottled  up  to  be  dis- 
posed of  later;  and  the  cutting  of  the  railway  was 
momentarily  expected. 

While  awaiting  this,  the  officer  in  charge  of 
the  A.  R.  A.  work,  ran  a  truck  up  to  Krasnicelo, 
about  a  dozen  miles  north  of  Gatchina  in  the  direction 
of  the  Gulf,  and  started  to  open  kitchens  there.  The 
village  was  held  by  Prince  Lieven's  detachment,  and 
from  the  brow  of  the  hill  just  beyond  it  we  could  look 
down  on  the  Gulf  and  the  flats  that  stretch  toward  the 
capital.  There,  big  as  life,  about  a  dozen  miles  away 
in  an  air  line,  clear  and  calm  in  the  afternoon  sunlight, 


WAR  AND  PEACE  WITH  THE  BOLSHEVIKS  109 

lay  the  Forbidden  City.  There  was  the  dome  of  St. 
Isaac's,  and  the  gilt  spire  of  the  Admiralty — one  could 
even  see  trains  pulling  out  of  the  Nikolai  station,  and 
the  white  plumes  of  their  steam  trailing  across  the 
brown  landscape  as  they  hurried  toward  Moscow! 

To  the  left,  one  could  follow  the  Gulf  shore  up  to 
Kronstadt  and  beyond.  A  dark  craft,  apparently  a 
gunboat,  was  steaming  westward  close  inshore,  and 
across  the  Gulf  were  the  white  sand  beaches  where 
we  had  gone  swimming  in  1916.  There  was  not  a 
sign  nor  sound  of  war,  as  we  came  out  on  the  hill,  and 
one  looked  down  on  the  city  which  I  had  been  trying 
for  months  in  vain  to  get  into,  as  one  looks  down  on 
New  York  across  the  Jersey  meadows.  It  seemed 
as  if  one  could  slip  a  couple  of  sandwiches  in  one's 
pocket  and  tramp  downhill,  across  the  meadows  and 
into  the  capital  before  night.  Possibly  one  could,  but 
the  country  was  not  as  empty  as  it  looked,  and  two 
days  later,  just  after  the  first  kitchen  was  opened,  the 
Reds  swarmed  back  on  Krasnicelo  and  the  men  left 
in  charge  barely  had  time  to  reload  the  truck  and  run 
for  it. 

On  our  way  back  to  Gatchina  we  noticed  a  man  in 
civilian  clothes  under  guard  tramping  across  a  field 
about  two  hundred  yards  from  the  road.  Peasants 
were  staring  from  the  road  and  somebody  called  out 
"It's  a  Commissaire  1"  We  stopped  with  the  rest  and 
also  stared.  The  men  passed  behind  a  screen  of 
bushes.  One  could  see  them  but  partly  now,  and  we 
climbed  on  the  highest  parts  of  the  truck,  passed  a 
glass  from  hand  to  hand,  endeavored,  with  that  strange 
mixture  of  eagerness  and  shame,  with  which  human 


beings  watch  another  being  killed,  to  see  what  we 
could. 

"Look!  Look!"  screamed  the  legation  attache. 
"They  are  undressing  him!  I  can  see  the  white!" 
One  could,  indeed,  see  a  bit  of  white,  a  man's  shirt 
sleeves,  evidently.  There  was  a  moment's  silence, 
then  a  shot.  Then  several;  then,  after  a  long  pause, 
a  final  one.  Presently,  the  men  in  long  tan  overcoats, 
without  the  civilian,  reappeared  from  behind  the 
screen  of  bushes  and  started  back  across  the  field,  step- 
ping rather  high  over  the  spongy  ground  in  the  long 
grass.  The  peasants  kept  staring,  and  the  truck  start- 
ing with  a  jerk,  shifted  gears  and  went  drumming  on 
its  way. 

Just  short  of  Gatchina  we  turned  off  to  the 
northeast  and  took  the  road  for  Tsarkoecelo,  another 
of  the  old  Imperial  residence  towns,  only  about  fifteen 
miles  from  Petrograd,  and  now  reported  in  the  hands 
of  the  Whites.  We  passed  batches  of  prisoners  scuf- 
fling rearward,  farmyards  with  soldiers  warming 
themselves  about  wood  fires,  and  finally  batteries  firing 
into  the  hazy  northeast.  We  had  caught  sight  of 
the  palace  roof  and  were  just  starting  into  Tsarkoecelo 
itself  when  an  officer  standing  with  several  others  by 
the  road  held  up  his  hand. 

It  was  General  Rodzianko  himself.  Often  spoken 
of  as  a  dare-devil,  he  was  outwardly  now,  as  when  I 
had  seen  him  earlier  in  the  year,  a  rather  slow-moving, 
lustreless  person,  with  the  air  of  surveying  with  a  good- 
natured,  somewhat  weary  irony,  a  hopeless  job.  We 
couldn't  go  into  the  town,  he  said.  He  held  it,  but 


WAR  AND  PEACE  WITH  THE  BOLSHEVIKS  111 

didn't  have  enough  men  to  consolidate  his  position. 
"I  may  have  to  fall  back  to-morrow  morning,  myself," 
he  muttered. 

What,  he  asked,  was  Denikin  doing?  Now  was 
his  time  to  strike — he  ought  to  fling  everything  he  had 
against  Moscow.  The  Northwest  Army  had  done 
everything  men  could.  They  had  been  advancing 
twenty  or  thirty  kilometers  a  day,  fighting  all  the  time 
and  sleeping  in  the  mud  wherever  they  happened  to  be. 
"I  went  very  fast,"  he  sighed,  in  his  rueful  way. 

An  old  retired  officer  who  had  been  living  in  Tsar- 
koecelo  wanted  to  get  back  to  Gatchina.  Would  we 
not  come  into  headquarters  and  wait  a  moment  while 
he  sent  for  him?  We  went  through  a  muddy  farm- 
house court  and  up  a  narrow  unlighted  stairway  into 
a  room  where  several  officers  were  sitting.  There 
was  a  table  with  a  smoky  lamp,  maps  and  papers, 
and  looking  down  from  the  wall,  faded  framed  litho- 
graphs of  Nicholas  II  and  the  Tsarina.  Rodzianko 
dropped  into  a  chair,  and  pushing  his  face  close  to 
the  dim  light,  began  doggedly  to  read  through  the 
Bolshevist  papers  just  brought  in  by  his  orderly — 
papers  printed  in  Petrograd  the  day  before,  and  full 
of  stories  of  Soviet  successes,  abuse  of  himself  and 
other  anti-Bolsheviks,  and  appeals  to  the  workers  to 
unite  and  throw  back  the  capitalistic  invaders. 

The  clock  on  the  wall  ticked  sleepily,  the  guns 
rumbled  in  the  distance,  half  an  hour  or  so  passed  and 
no  sign  of  our  passenger.  The  General  pushed  back 
his  chair  and  went  out,  'the  last  of  the  daylight  disap- 
peared and  the  only  light  left  was  the  feeble  lamp. 

With  his  eyes  fixed  on  this  lamp,  across  from  where 


112        NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

Rodzianko  had  been  sitting,  a  young  officer  leaned, 
wrapped  to  the  chin  in  a  long  tight-fitting  Cossack  coat, 
with  an  astrakan  cap  stuck  rakishly  over  one  ear.  His 
elbows  were  on  the  table,  hands  folded  in  front  of  his 
chin,  in  one  of  them  a  cigarette.  The  half-barbarous 
costume  contrasted  oddly  with  his  cameo-like  features, 
almost  too  finely  cut,  and  his  air,  head  thrown  back  and 
eyes  fixed  dreamily  on  the  lamp,  of  having  been  born 
a  little  tired.  The  curious  wax-like  delicacy  of  his 
upper  face  was  again  accented  by  his  long  Dundreary 
whiskers,  which  recalled  the  languid  dandies  of  Leech's 
and  Thackeray's  time.  Oblivious  to  everything  about 
him,  pulling  at  the  cigarette  from  time  to  time,  eyes 
never  leaving  the  lamp,  he  was  lost,  one  could  imagine, 
here  on  the  edge  of  the  Petrograd  his  army  was  losing, 
in  memories  of  old  Russia,  of  hunts  and  courts,  Cri- 
mean summers  and  Petersburg  winter  nights,  or  visions 
even  more  remote  and  Byzantine. 

The  wick  burned  out  and  began  to  sputter.  An- 
other officer  came  in,  and  talking  as  he  sat  on  the  edge 
of  the  table,  turned  the  wick  up  as  fast  as  it  burned 
down.  That  this  did  no  good,  that  the  only  thing 
to  do  was  to  refill  the  lamp  or  to  send  for  another,  or 
that  either  of  these  things  was  worth  doing,  did  not 
seem  to  occur  to  anyone,  least  of  all  to  the  motionless 
figure,  rapt  as  a  Buddha,  staring  into  the  guttering 
light.  The  officer  stopped  turning  presently  and  went 
out.  The  light  sank  to  a  mere  spark,  scarcely  brighter 
than  the  cigarettes  that  spotted  the  dusk.  And  at  last 
a  soldier  came  in  with  a  new  lamp  and  his  peasant's 
air  of  something  positive  and  practical.  The  officer 
in  Cossack's  uniform  shifted  slightly,  put  another  ciga- 


WAR  AND  PEACE  WITH  THE  BOLSHEVIKS  113 

rette  in  the  holder  and  with  chin  resting  on  his  crossed 
hands,  continued  to  gaze  into  the  light.  .  .  . 

Our  passenger  not  appearing,  we  started  back  for 
Gatchina.  The  guns  were  pounding  briskly  and  fling- 
ing up  their  heat-lightning  along  a  wide  arc  fronting 
Petrograd.  Not  far  from  Gatchina  the  road  was 
blocked  by  two  tanks  grinding  back  for  rest  and  re- 
pairs. They  loomed  monstrous  in  the  dark  and  still- 
ness of  this  rural  Russian  world,  so  remote  from  the 
industrial  civilization  of  which  they  were  a  sort  of 
nightmare  excrescence,  and  seeing  them  thus,  each 
staring  down  the  road  out  of  its  one  tiny  search-light 
eye,  one  could  fancy  that  to  the  Russian  peasant  sol- 
diers who  had  to  face  them,  they  might  seem,  indeed, 
the  living,  poison-breathing  symbol  of  all  their  Com- 
munist leaders  taught  them  to  fight. 

Our  truck  swung  out,  slewed,  and  sunk  its  rear 
wheels  in  mud.  We  tumbled  off,  somebody  called  out 
"Hello!"  there  was  a  cheery,  "I  say!  It's  good  to  hear 
English  again!"  and  we  were  gossiping  with  two 
young  British  officers  and  a  greasy  mechanician  just 
emerged,  fire-extinguisher  in  hand,  from  the  over- 
heated insides  of  the  clumsy  dragon.  On  the  side  of 
the  tank,  in  Russian  lettering,  was  the  name  "Captain 
Cromie" — the  British  officer  killed  by  the  Bolsheviks 
early  in  1918,  in  the  British  Embassy  in  Petrograd. 

This  was  one  of  the  tanks  for  which  the  Northwest 
Army  had  been  pleading  all  summer,  in  the  fond  be- 
lief that  they  were  irresistible.  They  had  arrived  late, 
like  nearly  everything  else,  and  while  their  volunteer 
crews  had  fought  tirelessly,  tanks  in  trench  warfare, 


114         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

backed  by  a  profusion  of  artillery  and  first-class  in- 
fantry, and  a  few  tanks  rattling  around  in  scores  of 
miles  of  open  country  are  very  different  things. 

"You  can't  make  these  Russians  understand  that  a 
tank  can't  be  fought  right  along  day  after  day,"  said 
one  of  the  officers.  "We  were  on  fire  three  times  yes- 
terday, and  once  we  were  all  out  on  our  backs  on  the 
ground,  coming  to,  when  the  Bolos  attacked  and  we 
had  to  go  to  it  again."  The  Bolsheviks  fought  well, 
they  said,  especially  some  of  the  new  cadet  battalions. 
"Those  boys  came  out  yesterday  within  fifty  feet  of 
us,  with  nothing  but  their  rifles  in  their  hands !' 

It  was  plain  that  the  Soviet  troops,  whether  they 
had  run  away  or  had  merely  fallen  back  to  draw  the 
White  army  on,  were  now  holding  hard.  If  Rodzi- 
anko  was  not  sure  of  Tsarkoecelo,  he  did  not  stand 
much  chance  of  taking  a  city  like  Petrograd,  cut  by 
canals,  divided  by  a  wide  river,  and  defended  now  by 
a  force  probably  five  times  as  large  as  his  own. 

If  the  much-talked-of  uprising  within  the  capital  had 
come  off,  if  Denikin  and  Kolchak  could  have  started,  if 
all  the  various  possibilities  could  have  been  translated 
into  action,  history  might  have  been  different.  As  it 
was,  Krascicelo  was  retaken  the  next  day,  Gatchina 
was  evacuated  a  few  days  later,  and  the  Northwest 
Army  fell  back  on  Narva.  The  Esthonians,  having 
agreed  with  the  other  Baltic  states  to  meet  the  Soviet 
representatives  at  Dorpat  for  a  preliminary  discus- 
sion of  peace,  announced  that  they  would  be  compelled 
to  disarm  the  White  army  if  it  attempted  to  take  refuge 
in  Esthonia.  This  was  partially  done  and  the  Judenitch 
army,  as  a  fighting  force,  ceased  to  exist. 


WAR  AND  PEACE  WITH  THE  BOLSHEVIKS  115 
THE  BOLSHEVIKS'  FIRST  BRIDGE  TO  THE  WEST 

The  early  Baltic  winter  had  shut  down  in  earnest 
when  Litvinov  came  out  to  Dorpat.  The  Baltic  was 
closed,  or  closing,  to  further  naval  adventures;  the 
remnant  of  the  Northwest  Army  was  huddled  back  on 
Narva ;  and  with  the  assurance  that  the  Soviet  Govern- 
ment was  willing  to  pay  well  for  peace,  the  Esthonians 
began  to  assume  a  new  air  of  masters  in  their  own 
house. 

For  the  old  university  town  of  Dorpat,  the  intel- 
lectual center  of  the  old  time  Balticum,  this  meeting 
of  Russian  Bolshevik  and  revolted  province  was  quaint 
enough — as  if,  for  instance,  Sinn  Fein  had  come  to 
Oxford  to  discuss  with  the  British  Labour  Party  what 
sort  of  a  government  should  be  given  Ireland.  The 
Baits  were  wont  to  call  Dorpat  the  "Baltic  Heidle- 
berg."  Here,  with  a  slight  sprinkling  of  Esthonians 
and  Letts,  came  the  sons  of  the  Bait  squires.  They 
had  their  student  corps  and  duels,  although  not  quite 
in  the  German  fashion;  professors  were  brought  from 
Germany  (keeping  painstaking  diaries  of  their  adven- 
tures as  if  they  were  going  to  Borneo) — it  was  a  real 
outpost  of  Germanic  culture  in  the  half-Russian  pro- 
vince. 

The  Russians  had  already  done  what  they  could  in 
1895  to  change  its  character  by  turning  out  the  old 
professors  and  changing  the  name  of  Dorpat  to  Juriev, 
although  the  young  Baits  continued  to  attend.  And 
now  that  both  Bait  and  Russian  were  being  swept  aside 
by  the  tide  of  newer  nationalism,  the  brand-new  mas- 
ters were  trying  (with  a  handful  of  teachers,  no  capital 


116        NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

and  the  Esthonian  mark  worth  less  than  two  cents)  to 
make  the  place  quite  Esthonian.  The  campus  trees 
and  walks  still  held  their  air,  but  all  over  the  little 
town,  itself,  the  new  broom  was  sweeping  clean. 

The  Esthonian  name  for  the  town  is  Tartu.  Es- 
thonian soldiers  marched  frequently  through  the 
town  by  day,  Esthonian  sentries  demanded  permits 
if  one  was  abroad  after  ten  at  night.  The  former 
Russian  Corps  headquarters  had  been  newly  fur- 
nished for  the  conference,  and  Esthonian  sentries 
snapped  their  bayonetted  rifles  out  at  full  arm's  length, 
as  one  entered,  in  the  old-fashioned  Russian  salute. 

It  was  toward  the  end  of  one  of  those  dark  Baltic 
days  when  it  never  seems  quite  light  nor  warm  any- 
where (the  big  china  stoves  only  turning  the  houses 
into  slightly  tempered  refrigerators)  and  you  go  shiv- 
ering about  in  a  sort  of  half-Arctic  twilight,  that  the 
Bolshevik  delegation — Litvinov,  a  man  and  two  young 
women  secretaries — arrived.  They  had  been  brought 
on  from  the  frontier  in  a  special  train,  carefully 
escorted  by  a  young  British  officer  and  a  secretary  from 
the  Esthonian  Foreign  Office,  and  they  were  whisked 
away,  bundled  up  in  furs,  to  a  house  conveniently  set 
back  behind  trees,  a  high  wall  and  an  iron  gate.  Sen- 
tries stood  all  about  it  in  the  snow ;  another  was  at  the 
gate  who  had  to  blow  a  whistle  and  call  an  officer 
before  anyone  was  allowed  to  enter.  No  one  might 
speak  with  Litvinov,  and  the  only  chance  he  had  to 
make  propaganda  was  to  send  it  up  in  balloons. 

He  appeared  in  public  the  next  afternoon  on  his 
way  to  the  conference — a  stocky,  round-faced,  rather 


WAR  AND  PEACE  WITH  THE  BOLSHEVIKS  117 

amused-looking  man,  in  fur  overcoat  and  gray  astrakan 
cap,  comfortably  settled  in  the  back  seat  of  an 
Esthonian  military  automobile  with  a  big  cigar  in 
his  teeth.  Cigars  in  Esthonia  at  the  moment  were 
all  but  unknown;  cigarettes  from  the  British  warships 
had  sold  for  two  marks  apiece  in  Reval  during  the 
summer;  even  particular  people  were  trying  to  grow 
their  own  tobacco ;  the  common  herd  smoked  mahorka 
and  other  evil-smelling  substitutes,  and  few  things 
could  have  given  a  more  "bourzhooy"  air  to  this  rep- 
resentative of  the  proletariat. 

In  conference  he  had  the  air  of  a  good-natured  busi- 
ness-man rather  than  the  "intellectual"  or  professional 
diplomat.  He  seemed  direct  and  frank,  not  without 
a  sense  of  humour  and  distinctly  able  to  take  care  of 
himself.  The  delegates  were  impressed  with  his 
shrewdness.  English  he  spoke  fluently  but  with  a 
strong  Jewish  roll  to  his  initial  "r's."  His  style  of 
writing  was  compact  and  authoritative. 

At  the  head  of  the  conference  table  sat  the  Estho- 
nian Acting  Foreign  Minister,  Mr.  Piip,  a  teacher  by 
profession,  lately  Esthonian  representative  in  London, 
with  agreeable  manners  and  something  of  a  gift  for 
saying  nothing,  or,  with  a  child-like  blandness,  saying 
something,  quite  impossible.  On  Mr.  Piip's  right  was 
the  Lithuanian,  Dr.  Sliupas,  a  bearded  and  spectacled 
veteran  of  the  Lithuanian  national  movement  who  had 
spent  a  good  part  of  his  life  in  America.  Litvinov 
sat  at  Mr.  Piip's  left,  and  beyond  him  the  rather  vi- 
vacious delegates  from  Latvia — Mr.  Friedenburg,  a 
bushy-haired,  heavy-featured  man,  with  somewhat  the 
air  of  an  Italian  tragedian,  and  Mr.  Arvid  Berg,  a 


118        NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

slim  young  lawyer,  himself  a  graduate  of  Dorpat,  and 
the  author  of  a  little  book  translated  into  French 
showing  how  easily  Latvia  could  get  along  without 
Russia. 

The  Finns  took  no  active  part  in  the  conference.  A 
Polish  delegate  was  present  in  Dorpat  but  reticent, 
and  on  the  day  Litvinov  arrived  he  took  care  to  an- 
nounce in  the  local  paper  that  he  had  left  town,  and 
having  thus  established  an  official  absence  went  to  a 
masquerade  and  lightheartedly  danced  until  six  next 
morning.  The  delegates  from  White  Russia,  or  White 
Ruthenia,  and  from  the  Ukraine,  also  merely  looked 
on. 

The  Baltic  delegates  stated  that  they  were  there  to 
act  as  a  unit  and  prepared  to  discuss  only  the  ex- 
change of  civil  prisoners,  or  so-called  hostages.  Lit- 
vinov expressed  regret  at  this  and  said  that  he  had 
hoped  to  talk  peace  at  once — it  would  be  easy  to  ar- 
range about  prisoners  afterward.  However,  just  as 
they  pleased  about  that,  and  the  discussions  began. 

They  were  complicated  by  problems  of  national 
dignity  which  seemed  vitally  important  to  each  group 
concerned,  and  burdened  with  those  preoccupations 
about  what  "the  powers"  might  think,  from  which 
little  nations  are  rarely  free.  Americans  forget,  or 
are  too  fortunately  situated  ever  to  have  been  obliged 
in  the  European  sense  to  remember,  how  tragically 
real  such  political  pressure  may  be.  A  thousand  miles 
away,  for  instance,  Mr.  Lloyd  George  makes  a  speech. 
Mr.  George  is  a  light-footed  opportunist,  with  a  keen 
desire  to  know  and  a  gift  for  finding  out  what  the 
other  man  wants.  It  is  hard  to  know  what  the  British 


WAR  AND  PEACE  WITH  THE  BOLSHEVIKS  119 

want  to  do  in  Russia  and  he  sends  up  what  the  diplo- 
matists call  a  trial  balloon.  He  declares  that  Bolshe- 
vism cannot  be  beaten  by  force,  having  already  in  the 
same  speech,  stoutly  praised  the  views  of  a  military 
gentleman  who  declares  that  force  is  the  only  thing. 

The  phrase,  "no  force"  flashes  round  the  Baltic,  and 
finally  out  to  the  dreary  front.  England  is  pulling  out, 
the  word  goes  round.  The  Esthonians,  hungry  for 
peace,  see  at  last  a  chance  of  getting  back  home.  "De- 
serted !"  cry  the  Judenitch  leaders — then  all  is,  indeed, 
lost.  Mere  words,  tossed  out,  perhaps  to  please  some 
particular  group  of  faces  which  happen  to  be  looking 
up  at  the  speaker,  and  a  thousand  miles  away  an  of- 
fensive stops,  or  real  men  go  forward,  perhaps,  to 
kill  and  be  killed. 

The  delegates  here  in  Dorpat  might  hate  old  Rus- 
sia as  much  as  they  pleased,  but  if  the  Allies  put  a 
blockade  on  them  and  cut  off  munitions  all  their  fine 
independence  enthusiasm  would  go  up  in  smoke.  If 
England  had  not,  for  instance,  recently  turned  over 
25,000  rifles  to  the  Letts,  Bermondt  would  probably 
have  taken  Riga  instead  of  merely  bombarding  it; 
and  if  the  four  ships,  two  British  and  two  French, 
then  in  the  Duna,  below  Riga,  were  to  sail  away,  Ber- 
mondt might  still  cross  the  river  and  take  the  town. 

The  Esthonians  had  a  government  that  worked  and 
80,000  men  to  back  it,  but  their  men  were  wearing 
British  uniforms  and  they  carried  British  rifles.  It 
was  reported  on  what  seemed  good  authority  one  even- 
ing that  Finland  was  to  be  forced  into  the  war  and 
that  30,000  men  were  to  be  marched  against  Petro- 
grad.  Pressure,  economic  and  political,  was  being  ex- 


120         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

erted  on  the  other  Baltic  States,  so  strong  that  the 
Conference  would  probably  close  next  day.  The  Finns 
were  not  forced  in,  although  for  a  day  or  two  it 
seemed  but  a  toss-up,  and  the  Conference  did  not 
break  up,  but  it  is  in  such  an  atmosphere  that  little 
nations  have  to  settle  their  present  and  future  affairs, 
and  free  will  and  self-determination  are  for  them  de- 
cidedly relative  terms. 

In  the  tangle  of  interests  and  rumors,  and  the  in- 
teresting but  vague  talk  of  a  Baltic  Federation  which 
should  unite  in  a  defensive  alliance  all  the  border  states, 
the  Esthonians  kept  their  feet  on  the  ground,  com- 
paratively speaking,  and  their  eyes  on  the  main  chance. 
There  was  no  doubt  of  Mr.  Piip's  satisfaction  when  he 
blandly  announced  one  day  that  the  Judenitch  troops 
would  be  disarmed  if  they  retreated  into  Esthonian 
territory,  and  it  was  with  the  air  of  having  already 
arrived  at  some  sort  of  an  understanding  that  he  said 
that  they  no  longer  feared  attacks  from  Bolshevik 
Russia. 

The  Esthonians  felt  sufficiently  at  home,  indeed,  in 
their  new  nationalism  to  begin  to  assume  the  air  of 
generous  hosts.  There  were  various  festivities  for 
the  visiting  delegates,  including  dancing,  and  dancing, 
it  might  be  said,  is  still  dancing  in  this  part  of  the 
world.  No  lazy  shuffling,  but  quick  and  complicated 
steps,  the  ball  going  on  for  an  hour  or  so,  and  never 
the  same  dance  twice;  furious  waltzes,  nobody  revers- 
ing and  the  girls  feet  scarce  touching  the  ground;  ma- 
zurkas with  spurs  clicking  every  few  steps;  pas  de 
quatre  and  pas  d'Espagne,  and  the  wengerka  or  Hun- 


WAR  AND  PEACE  WITH  THE  BOLSHEVIKS  121 

garian  dance,  with  a  whole  ball-room  leaping  and 
stamping  until  the  very  floor  shakes. 

As  human  animals  go,  the  Esthonians  are  not,  at 
any  rate  as  yet,  a  beautiful  race.  They  have  rather 
heavy  features,  often  of  a  slightly  Mongolian  cast,  and 
rather  heavy  manners.  They  have  not  had  much  time 
for  cultivating  the  amenities.  In  literature  and  the 
arts  they  have  done  little,  naturally,  but  their  folk- 
songs and  folk-lore  are  said  to  be  very  rich  and  inter- 
esting and  they  are  fond  of  music  and  the  theatre.  In 
Reval  they  had  built  themselves  a  big,  cream-colored 
pleasure  palace,  the  "Esthonia,"  with  a  theatre  in  one 
end  and  a  concert  hall  in  the  other  and  even  in  times 
like  these  something  was  going  on  there  nearly  every 
night.  And  when  they  do  give  a  party  they  give  it 
with  the  determination  and  thoroughness  of  a  new 
people  whose  social  curiosity  is  still  fresh  and  vitality 
unlimited. 

One  day  that  summer  the  Esthonian  Foreign  Office 
sent  out  invitations  to  a  tea  at  nine  o'clock.  Just  what 
a  tea  at  nine  o'clock  might  be  was  a  bit  puzzling  to 
most  foreigners  but  a  great  crowd  came,  including  all 
the  foreign  Consulate  and  Mission  people,  the  brand- 
new  Esthonian  society, — "everybody,"  in  short,  but  the 
excluded  Baits.  For  a  couple  of  hours  people  sat  at 
tables  and  listened  to  a  concert  while  consuming  vast 
amounts  of  fruit,  cakes,  ices  and  tea.  Then,  about 
midnight,  as  many  strangers  were  thinking  of  going 
home,  doors  to  another  hall  were  thrown  open  and  the 
guests  invited  to  attack  a  full  course  dinner.  Then 
there  was  dancing;  and  later  a  supper  with  plenty  of 
vodka  and  other  beverages;  and  about  five  or  six  in 


NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

the  morning  coffee  and  fruit — nearly  nine  hours,  in 
short,  of  more  or  less  continuous  eating  and  drinking 
in  a  country  in  which  there  was  a  real  shortage  of 
necessary  food  I 

The  Dorpat  Conference  lasted  three  days  and  then 
Litvinov  moved  on  to  Copenhagen  to  begin  the  long 
negotiations  which  ended,  over  a  year  later,  in  the 
trade-agreement  with  Britain.  The  only  concrete 
result  of  this  first  diplomatic  sortie  of  the  Bolsheviks 
was  a  mutual  agreement  to  exchange  prisoners.  The 
questions  of  an  armistice  and  peace  had  been  touched 
on  pretty  completely  over  the  tea  glasses,  however, 
and  peace  was  made  between  Esthonia  and  Soviet 
Russia  early  in  1920.  Esthonia  received  certain  minor 
territorial  additions  and  15,000,000  roubles  in  gold. 
The  Bolsheviks  opened  up  a  regular  diplomatic  mis- 
sion in  Reval  and  had  at  last  their  bridge  to  the  West. 


CHAPTER  VI 
REALITIES  OF  LAND  "REFORM" 

THE  Reval  of  the  following  June  seemed  another 
world  altogether  from  the  dark,  cold-beleaguered,  half- 
Arctic  town  I  had  left  just  after  the  Dorpat  confer- 
ence. Spring  in  the  Baltic  is  an  enchantment  even  more 
compelling  than  in  our  own  latitude,  and  all  at  once 
the  magical  northern  summer  had  come,  so  incredibly 
bright  and  soft  and  bountiful,  so  soon  to  go.  Over 
night,  so  to  speak,  the  chestnuts  were  in  bloom  and 
thick  with  shade,  the  old  gardens  fragrant  with  lilacs, 
and  from  the  Domberg  one  looked  down  on  a  sea  as 
soft  and  blue  as  that  of  Italy. 

The  hibernating  Esthonians,  gluttons  for  the  sun 
when  it  comes,  like  all  these  northern  peoples,  bloomed 
like  their  own  trees.  The  blond,  broad-chested  Es- 
thonian  girls  went  at  a  jump  from  furs  and  felt 
goloshes  to  the  airiest  of  summer  dresses,  and  came 
back  from  the  Whitsuntide  holidays,  tanned  black  as 
Indians.  Before  the  seeds  were  up  in  the  gardens, 
Briggitan  beach  was  strewn  with  bathers,  and  in  the 
amber  radiance  of  the  lengthening  white  nights,  peo- 
ple went  strolling  on  and  on  until  the  birds  began  to 
chirp  their  morning  songs. 

Nature,  in  short,  had  spread  her  beguiling  veil  over 
Esthonia  as  over  all  this  Baltic  world,  but  the  economic 

123 


124 

and  political  realities  underneath  this  illusive  mask 
were  as  hard  and  uncompromising  as  before.  The 
Esthonian  mark,  worth  nearly  two  cents  the  year  be- 
fore, was  selling  at  150  to  the  dollar,  and  dropping 
all  the  time.  The  trade  with  Russia,  and  between 
Russia  and  the  West,  which  peace  was  expected  to 
bring,  had  not  come,  or  had  come  only  in  driblets.  At- 
tempts to  use  the  Bolshevik  gold  as  a  basis  for  foreign 
credits,  to  stabilize  their  own  currency  and  bring  in 
the  raw  materials  for  which  the  Esthonian' s  factories 
were  famishing,  failed  because  of  the  refusal  of  the 
Western  Powers  to  permit  its  acceptance.  The  Es- 
thonians  had  sold  some  14,000,000  tons  of  potatoes 
to  the  Bolsheviks,  but  the  operation  had  accomplished 
little  beyond  reducing  their  own  supplies,  and  bringing 
back  into  Esthonia  some  more  of  their  own  almost 
worthless  paper. 

Lack  of  a  market  and  their  own  trade  restrictions 
had  prevented  the  export  of  any  considerable  amount 
of  timber.  A  certain  amount  of  potato  spirits  was 
smuggled  into  Finland,  and  this  alcohol  was  so  con- 
crete a  form  of  wealth  in  comparison  with  Esthonian 
paper,  that  Esthonians  travelling  to  Finland  often 
contrived  to  carry  along  a  bottle  or  two  in  place  of 
money,  and  in  Helsingfors  one  evening  my  Esthonian 
host,  as  he  passed  the  schnapps,  asked  if  I  would  not 
"have  a  nip  of  valuta."  But  Finland  was  theoretically 
enforcing  prohibition,  and  the  Russian  market,  which 
used  to  take  most  of  the  Esthonian  alcohol,  was  almost 
non-existent. 

The  cotton-mills  at  Narva  and  Reval  were  idle  on 
account  of  lack  of  cotton,  and  the  combustible  shale, 


REALITIES  OF  LAND  "REFORM"         125 

about  which  there  had  been  much  talk  the  autumn  be- 
fore, was  still  to  be  developed.  The  men  were  back 
from  the  army,  but  the  breaking  up  of  the  large  estates 
had  generally  substituted  for  comparatively  efficient 
management,  a  number  of  inexperienced  individuals, 
with  neither  the  animals,  machinery  nor  capital  neces- 
sary to  work  their  farms  when  they  got  them.  The 
acreage  planted  to  rye  was  a  quarter  less  than  the 
year  before,  and  the  yield  on  even  this  reduced  area 
would  be  less  per  acre,  the  Minister  of  Agriculture  ad- 
mitted, than  it  was  before  the  war. 

The  road  to  independence  was  not  rose-strewn  in 
Esthonia  any  more  than  elsewhere  in  eastern  Europe, 
and  the  outstanding  problem,  now  that  war  was  over, 
even  more  than  before,  was  naturally  the  land.  With 
the  agrarian  reform  law  passed  in  October  of  the  year 
before  and  more  or  less  actively  put  into  effect,  this 
whole  subject  had  begun  to  come  down  from  the  region 
of  oratory  in  which  it  had  tossed  about  during  1919, 
toward  the  level  of  practical  affairs.  The  tyranny  of 
the  Bait  nobility  and  the  land  hunger  of  the  Esthonian 
peasants  might  have  a  greater  or  less  reality  according 
to  the  point  of  view,  but  one  reality  could  not,  and  can 
not  in  the  future,  be  escaped — the  land  must  produce, 
whoever  holds  it,  and  the  people  must  be  fed. 

It  is  difficult  to  write  with  finality  of  land  reforms 
swept  through  by  majorities  dazzled  or  menaced  by 
Bolshevism.  Future  changes  in  Russia  might  bring 
changes  in  the  border  states  as  well.  But  laws  were 
passed,  at  any  rate,  and  real  property  changed  hands 
as  a  result,  and  it  is  at  least  pertinent  to  state  what 


126         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

these  laws  were  and  examine  into  their  enforcement. 
Before  doing  this,  however,  it  might  be  well  to  get 
a  more  definite  notion  of  the  typical  Bait  estate,  of 
the  usual  arrangements  between  owner  and  peasants, 
and  the  sort  of  life  that  went  on  there. 

The  Esthonians  are  fond  of  describing  the  Baits  as 
robber  barons  who  have  been  sitting  for  seven  hundred 
years  with  their  feet  on  the  Esthonians'  necks.  The 
picture  has  a  certain  figurative  application — about  like 
that,  for  example,  of  our  own  cartoons  which  used  to 
represent  the  Trusts  as  obese  giants  in  clothes  covered 
with  dollar  marks,  lording  it  over  a  diminutive,  meek 
and  spectacled  Common  People.  It  is  true  that  the 
Teutonic  Knights  conquered  the  country  seven  hundred 
years  ago  and  took  the  land,  as  was  the  custom  in  those 
days.  As  fighting  ceased  and  Europe  settled  down 
and  the  need  of  a  steady  population  of  laborers  be- 
came more  definite,  the  Esthonian  peasants  became  at- 
tached to  the  land  as  elsewhere  in  feudal  Europe.  It 
was  at  the  initiative  of  the  Baits,  however,  that  the 
Esthonian  peasants  were  freed  nearly  half  a  century 
before  those  in  Russia  proper,  and  when  it  became  ap- 
parent that  freedom  without  the  right  to  use  the  land 
they  had  tilled  merely  made  a  land  proletariat,  the 
Baits  set  aside  part  of  their  estates  as  co-called  "peas- 
ant-land" and  gave  the  peasants  the  right  to  buy  it  on 
long-term  payments.  When  the  war  started,  the 
Esthonian  peasants  had  acquired  over  a  million  and 
a  half  acres  by  this  sort  of  purchase.  Very  few  Baits 
could  trace  their  property  titles  back  to  the  thirteenth 
century;  many  estates  had  been  in  the  family  for  but 
a  generation  or  two,  and  some  of  those  taken  by  the 


REALITIES  OF  LAND  "REFORM"         1S7 

Esthonian  Government  since  the  agrarian  law  passed 
were  bought  shortly  before  the  war  and  paid  for  in 
hard  cash. 

The  Bait  baron  lived  well  and  spaciously.  He  had 
broad  lands,  cheap  labor,  and  a  very  agreeable  sense 
of  social  superiority.  But  the  Western  reader,  think- 
ing in  terms  of  his  own  industrial  and  banking  million- 
aires, may  easily  make  a  very  inaccurate  picture  of  the 
average  baron's  splendor.  Individually,  he  was  more 
often  than  not  a  practical  farmer,  with  little  ready 
money,  and  compelled,  in  order  to  give  his  family  a 
few  unproductive  weeks  or  months  each  winter  in 
Reval  or  Petrograd,  to  live  with  comparative  frugality 
to  make  ends  meet.  Motors  were  rare,  steam-yachts 
unheard  of;  the  ladies  of  the  family,  unless  very  much 
verrusst,  had  a  quite  German  understanding  of  house- 
wifely duties,  and  the  family  atmosphere  toward  ex- 
penditure and  mere  frivolity  was  often  characterized 
by  an  almost  Puritan  bleakness.  Americans  must  think 
of  the  Baits,  not  in  terms  of  Western  plutocracy,  but 
rat.ier  in  those  of  i8th  century  squires,  or  our  own 
Southern  plantation  owners  before  the  war.  Esthonia 
was,  indeed,  a  bit  of  the  1 8th  century,  forgotten  here 
in  the  lonely  Baltic  marches  between  new-rich  Berlin 
and  lavish  Petrograd. 

ON  AN  ESTHONIAN  ESTATE 

Imagine  yourself,  for  example,  visiting  one  of  these 
estates  not  yet  taken  over  by  the  government,  and  not 
a  great  deal  different  from  what  it  was  before  the  war. 
From  Reval,  the  little  wood-burning  train  rolls  lazily 
southward  for  four  or  five  hours  away  from  the  rather 


128         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

stony  coast  lands  to  pleasant,  level,  wooded  country, 
not  unlike  our  own  Middle  West.  One  is  met  at  the 
little  wooden  station,  all  the  attendants  of  which  are 
Esthonian,  by  a  roomy  old  victoria  (if  the  various 
raids  and  requisitions  have  overlooked  it),  with  an  an- 
cient family-coachman  on  the  box,  and  driven  six  or 
seven  miles  to  the  house. 

The  peasants  doff  their  hats  as  the  carriage  passes 
them,  the  Baron  doffs  his  likewise,  and  the  Baroness 
bows  politely.  The  chimney  of  the  distillery — an  im- 
portant part  of  all  these  Esthonian  estates — shows 
presently,  and  then  the  thick  trees  of  the  manor  park, 
and  you  drive  through  a  gateway  and  up  to  a  big 
white  house  to  be  received  by  the  family.  Visitors  are 
an  event  and  everybody  is  interested.  In  the  lower 
hall  are  hunting  trophies — fox  heads,  possibly  even  a 
big  stuffed  bear — dogs  appear,  to  smell  the  unfamiliar 
clothes  and  be  petted,  and  the  walls  as  one  ascends  the 
stairway  to  the  living  rooms,  are  hung  with  English 
sporting  prints  or  plates  of  the  uniforms  of  the  old 
Russian  army. 

The  rooms  are  high-ceilinged  and  spacious  and  filled 
with  family  portraits  and  old  furniture.  There  is  a 
library  with  books  in  French  and  English  as  well  as 
German  and  Russian,  and  always  a  ball-room  with 
parquetry  floor  and  glass  lustres.  Tea  is  ready  on  the 
balcony  or  vine-enclosed  upper  porch,  and  from  this  bal- 
cony one  looks  across  more  or  less  formal  flower-beds 
to  the  garden  and  hot-houses  and  bee-hives.  Nearly 
everything  except  clothes,  books  and  a  few  luxuries, 
comes  from  the  estate  itself — the  barley  porridge  in 
the  morning,  the  whole-wheat  flour  or  rye  from  which 


REALITIES  OF  LAND  "REFORM"         129 

home-made  bread  is  made,  is  ground  in  the  Dutch 
windmill  which  you  can  see  on  the  hill  from  your  bed- 
room window.  There  is  lots  to  eat — apples  and  pears 
in  the  autumn,  and  in  the  berry  season  strawberries 
and  raspberries  by  the  bushel. 

Adjoining  the  house  is  the  park,  with  formal  walks 
and  allees,  a  summer-house  here  and  there,  and  per- 
haps a  specially  level  bit  of  turf  on  the  outlying  edge, 
where  the  peasants  come  to  dance.  From  here,  several 
miles  away,  you  can  see  the  roofs  of  another  manor- 
house — the  nearest  neighbor.  In  the  old  days,  of 
course,  there  was  a  good  deal  of  going  and  coming 
between  these  country  families — hunts  and  dinner-par- 
ties. Much  of  the  country  is  covered  with  forest  and 
in  some  of  these  forests  there  are,  or  were  before  the 
war,  deer  and  bears  and  even  wolves — the  country  is 
still  a  little  "wild." 

Life  is  very  comfortable,  but  of  course,  like  most 
country  life,  even  in  more  thickly  settled  parts  of 
Europe,  without  many  of  the  mechanical  conveniences 
to  which  Western  city  folk  and  especially  Americans 
are  used.  There  may  or  may  not  be  electric  lights. 
Bathrooms  are  few  and  sanitary  arrangements,  gener- 
ally, cruder  than  those  in  even  moderate-priced  AmerU 
can  city  flats — in  these  matters  one  is  quite  in  the  i8th 
century.  But  of  servants,  and  willing,  even  kindly  serv- 
ice, there  is  plenty.  And  it  is  not  the  stiff  and  rather 
oppressively  exotic  service  of  many  of  our  Ameri- 
can country-houses.  A  round-faced,  smiling  Esthonian 
maid,  barefoot,  perhaps,  if  it  is  midsummer,  slips  in 
to  fling  back  the  window  curtains  when  it  is  time  to  get 
up,  and  bring  your  shaving  water.  In  the  same  quiet 


130         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

and  friendly  fashion  she  whisks  away  clothes  to  be 
brushed,  and  boots  to  be  blackened  the  evening  before. 
The  kitchen  is  full  of  people,  there  are  others  working 
about  the  garden  and  whenever  the  owner  passes  they 
salute  or  curtsey.  He  himself  must  be  a  sort  of  father 
to  the  lot.  If  someone  is  ill  he  is  sent  for  to  prescribe 
and  to  decide  whether  it  is  necessary  to  call  the  doctor. 
The  latter  lives  in  the  village  by  the  station  and  must 
be  driven  for  and  taken  home,  and  when  he  does  come, 
he  probably  stays  for  dinner  and  a  rubber  of  bridge. 

The  peasants  themselves  live  in  cottages  or  in  bar- 
rack-like dwelling*  made  to  accommodate  several  fami- 
lies. The  owner  provides  land  and  fuel,  and  possibly 
the  building  for  their  children  of  school  age,  while 
the  community,  as  a  rule,  pays  for  the  teacher;  or  the 
owner  may  pay  him  a  small  salary  which  is  eked  out 
by  playing  the  organ  in  church  and  similar  services. 
As  a  rule  the  Esthonian  peasants  read  and  write  and 
they  are  likely  to  take  a  Reval  or  Dorpat  newspaper. 
Amusements  are  few  and  simple.  They  dance  now 
and  then  in  summertime,  go  swimming,  and  sing  their 
folk  songs,  but  there  is  rarely,  if  ever,  as  there  is  in 
Finland,  a  common  meeting  place  or  what  could  be 
called  community-spirit.  Baits  to  whom  I  spoke  of 
this,  smiled  incredulously,  as  if  the  suggestion  were 
scarcely  serious. 

The  estate-owner's  children  are  likely  to  have  their 
English  governess,  or  at  any  rate  a  teacher  who  speaks 
English.  German  is  spoken  commonly  by  the  family 
when  they  are  by  themselves,  but  they  are  equally  at 
home  in  Russian,  and  almost  as  familiar  with  French. 


REALITIES  OF  LAND  "REFORM"         131 

English  is  not  so  common,  but  there  is  almost  always 
someone  in  the  family  who  speaks  it  with  comparative 
ease.  All  know  enough  Esthonian  to  talk  with  their 
servants  and  peasants.  The  Baits'  divided  allegiance 
between  the  Russia  to  which  he  politically  belonged  and 
the  Germany  with  which  he  was  racially  connected  is 
picturesquely  illustrated  sometimes  in  the  children  of 
these  families,  and  you  will  find  one  daughter,  for  in- 
stance, who  loves  the  country,  hates  the  town,  rides 
like  a  trooper,  shakes  hands  with  a  sharp  correctness, 
talks  crops  and  cattle  with  her  father,  and,  in  the  un- 
sentimental sense  of  the  word  is  echt  Deutsch  and  a 
true  junker's  daughter;  and  another  who  hates  practi- 
cal farming,  reads  novels,  laughs  at  German  manners 
with  a  true  Russian  contempt,  and  dreams  of  getting 
back  to  the  city  like  the  restless  young  ladies  in  Che- 
kov's  "Three  Sisters." 

One  such  estate  as  this  with  which  I  was  familiar, 
covered  an  area  about  five  miles  by  three,  and  contained 
9,814  acres.  Of  these,  4,100  were  in  forest  and  2,520 
acres  in  swamp  lowland  which  the  owner  had  spent  a 
large  amount  of  money  in  draining.  There  were  2,200 
acres  in  grain  and  potatoes;  716  in  hay  and  278  in 
pasture. 

The  peasants  on  this  estate  were  all  what  are  called 
deputat-knechts  or  hired  laborers.  There  are  no  halb- 
korners — those  who  work  on  shares,  giving  the  owner 
half  their  harvest  for  the  use  of  the  land,  an  arrange- 
ment more  common  in  Latvia — nor  the  lower  order 
of  land-knechts,  who  give  half  their  time  to  the  owner 


132         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

for  the  use  of  a  small  piece  of  land.  The  contract 
which  this  owner  made  with  his  peasants  was  as  fol- 
lows: 

The  peasant  got  lodging  for  himself  and  family,  gar- 
den land  for  his  own  vegetables,  half  an  acre  for  po- 
tatoes and  another  half  acre  for  barley — the  horses 
for  the  cultivation  of  which  were  loaned  by  the  land- 
lord— enough  meadow  land  for  two  or  three  cattle 
and  a  few  sheep,  and  wood  for  fuel.  In  supplies  he 
received  yearly  35  poods  of  barley  (a  pood  is  about 
40  pounds),  200  pounds  of  wheat,  200  pounds  of 
dried  peas,  120  pounds  of  salt,  seed  potatoes,  malt  for 
his  beer  and  enough  kerosene  for  house  lamps.  In 
cash  he  received  from  90  to  100  roubles — about  $50. 
In  return  for  this  he  was  expected  to  work  every  day 
except  Sundays  and  holidays — about  280  days  in  the 
year.  The  hours  of  work  in  the  short  summer,  when 
it  is  light  practically  all  the  time,  are  twelve,  at  least; 
in  winter  much  less.  With  the  help  of  his  family,  the 
sale  of  eggs  and  milk,  and  a  cow  or  pig  every  few  years 
a  peasant  is  able  under  this  arrangement  to  put  aside 
a  little  for  capital  provided  he  spends  nothing  on 
"luxuries". 

A  "bourgeois"  Esthonian  who  owned  an  estate  had 
a  similar  arrangement.  His  peasants,  he  told  me,  re- 
ceived their  lodging,  half  an  acre  for  potatoes,  quarter 
of  an  acre  for  a  garden,  enough  meadow  for  a  cow  and 
two  or  three  sheep,  and  some  necessary  straw  and 
hay.  Each  family  got  1600  pounds  of  barley  and  the 
same  of  rye,  and  a  few  bushels  of  seed  wheat  and  peas. 
They  were  permitted  to  keep  a  pig  and  chickens.  They 
had  free  fire  wood  and  about  three  gallons  of  kerosene 


REALITIES  OF  LAND  "REFORM"         133 

and  from  85  to  100  roubles  in  cash.  The  wife  was 
expected  to  work  steadily  the  same  number  of  days  as 
her  husband  for  from  30  to  40  kopeks  (15  to  20 
cents)  a  day.  Food,  clothing,  shoes  and  amusements 
the  peasant  was  expected  to  provide  out  of  this  for 
himself — "by  stealing  what  he  can  from  the  estate," 
this  emancipated  Esthonian  observed  with  a  knowing 
grin. 

With  the  work  of  his  wife  and  children,  a  peasant 
husband  could  often  get  the  use  of  spare  land  in  addi- 
tion to  the  plot  regularly  allowed  him,  and  accumulate 
capital  and  buy  land  on  payments  running  for  long 
terms  of  forty  or  fifty  years  with  interest.  Families 
which  remained  on  the  estate  for  several  generations 
could  thus  acquire  slowly  but  without  sharp  effort, 
farms  of  their  own  and  the  children  or  grandchildren 
become  themselves,  in  a  small  way,  independent  farm- 
ers. The  less  thrifty  and  ambitious  stuck  pretty  much 
where  they  were,  not  greatly  dissatisfied,  probably,  nor 
dreaming  of  anything  much  better,  living  very  much 
as  farm  horses  and  oxen  did,  certain  at  least  of  food, 
shelter  and  security,  but  not  getting  much  ahead. 

Getting  ahead  depended,  of  course,  on  the  broad- 
mindedness  of  proprietors  as  well  as  on  individual 
quality.  Peasant  girls  who  showed  ability  as  ladies' 
maids  and  were  taken  up  to  town  with  their  mistresses 
might  make  themselves  so  indispensable  as  to  work  out 
of  the  peasant  rut  altogether.  Clever  and  ambitious 
boys  could  be  encouraged  to  help  themselves,  and  there 
are  not  a  few  such  among  the  Esthonian  intelligentsia 
today — men  whose  fathers  were  peasants,  who  began 
life  as  peasants  themselves  perhaps.  There  were  pro- 


134.    NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

prietors,  on  the  other  hand,  who  regarded  any  attempt 
of  the  peasants  to  better  themselves  as  something  to 
be  sat  on  at  once — they  must  keep  their  place — and  it 
is  such  proprietors  who  get  remembered  in  days  like 
these. 

Where  some  fundamental  reason  for  resentment  ex- 
ists— like  the  social  inequality  between  Baits  and  Esths 
— hatred  is  bound  to  flash  out  even  against  those  who 
do  not  individually  deserve  it.  The  stranger  will  see 
many  examples  of  friendly  relations  between  the  two 
races,  and  even,  now  and  then,  a  touch  of  old-time 
feudal  beauty  and  faithfulness.  It  was  after  the  land 
law  had  been  passed  and  the  estates  were  being  taken 
over  that  a  Bait  friend  wrote  me  of  the  scene  at  the 
funeral  of  one  of  his  relatives — how  the  peasants  had 
gathered  at  her  grave  to  sing  hymns,  and  as  his  sister 
was  about  to  enter  the  house  afterward,  how  they  had 
run  forward  in  a  spontaneous  gesture  of  sympathy  to 
seize  and  kiss  her  hands. 

But  with  most  Esthonians,  particularly  educated 
ones,  the  Baits  are  a  sort  of  blind  spot — any  objective 
consideration  of  them  is  made  impossible  by  inherited 
prejudice  and  the  slant  their  minds  have  been  given 
by  convictions  absorbed  before  they  were  old  enough 
to  think  for  themselves.  A  very  sensible  and  intelli- 
gent Esthonian  woman  who  could  see  little  good  in 
any  Bait  told  me  one  day,  as  if  it  explained  every- 
thing, how  her  father  had  once  been  called  up  by  the 
Baroness  who  employed  him  and  asked  what  he  meant 
by  sending  his  son  off  to  school,  merely  to  spoil  him — 
a  boy  who  is  now  a  successful  and  respected  business 
man.  Another,  after  listening  doggedly  to  favorable 


REALITIES  OF  LAND  "REFORM"         135 

comments  I  had  been  making  about  a  Bait  acquain- 
tance suddenly  flung  out  in  a  tone  like  cold  steel — "You 
don't  understand  how  we  feel  about  these  things  I 
When  my  grandmother  was  a  girl  the  Baron  could 
make  his  peasants  marry  whoever  he  pleased,  and  if 
the  girl  pleased  him  she  must  come  to  him,  if  he 
wished,  after  the  marriage,  before  she  went  to  her 
husband."  .  .  .  Whether  such  droits  de  seigneur  have 
been  enforced  in  recent  times,  or  are  merely  echoes 
of  an  earlier  age  altogether,  family  traditions  of  this 
sort  are  a  very  real  force  today  and  sometimes  explain 
acts  and  opinions  that  otherwise  might  seem  incom- 
prehensible. 

The  estate  of  which  I  have  just  spoken  was  run  as 
a  practical  farm  and  the  main  source  of  its  owner's 
income.  He  himself  was  an  intelligent  farmer,  with 
little  love  for  the  town,  and  the  active  executive  of 
what,  on  a  farm  of  this  size,  is  a  man's  size  business. 
He  planned  the  general  scheme  of  crops,  time  of  plow- 
ing, sowing,  etc.,  and  worked  out  the  details  with  the 
help  of  ( i )  a  manager  or  superintendent.  The  latter, 
at  once  a  subordinate  and  a  more  or  less  independent 
executive,  must  be  carefully  chosen  and  tactfully 
treated.  The  other  members  of  the  farm  organization 
were  (2)  the  book-keeper,  (3)  the  store-keeper  or 
quartermaster  who  had  charge  of  tools,  machinery, 
seed  and  other  supplies,  and  (4)  two  assistant  superin- 
tendents. The  rationing  of  stock,  what  sort  of  feed 
and  how  much  of  it  should  be  fed  at  particular  seasons, 
was  worked  out  by  the  owner,  superintendent  and  book- 
keeper, and  transmitted  to  the  quartermaster  to  be  car- 
ried out.  In  addition  to  these  persons  there  was, 


136        NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

above  the  general  run  of  "hands"  (5)  a  blacksmith 
with  two  helpers  (6)  a  machinist  for  the  reapers  and 
(7)  another  for  the  threshers  and  finally  (8)  a  dis- 
tiller to  attend  to  the  making  of  potato  spirits. 

This  latter  industry  was  an  important  one  in  peace 
times,  not  only  for  the  barons  themselves,  who  had  a 
monopoly  of  it  and  carried  on  a  rather  demoralizing 
trade  in  schnapps  with  their  peasants,  but  for  the  pro- 
vince as  a  whole.  The  nobles  had  their  central  dis- 
tributing agency  in  Reval  and  alcohol  was  one  of  the 
main  exports.  These  distilleries,  with  their  huge  fields 
of  potatoes,  grown  for  alcohol  as  sugar  beets  are  growri 
for  sugar,  made  many  of  these  farms  semi-industrial 
units,  which  it  will  be  difficult  to  divide  into  small 
parcels  without  changing  crops  and  methods  altogether, 
and  potatoes  are  a  crop  which  flourish  particularly  well 
in  Esthonia. 

The  owner  of  this  particular  estate,  told  me  that 
in  peace  times  he  had  been  accustomed  to  spend  in 
actual  cash,  including  all  expenses  for  clothes,  books, 
and  the  winter  months  in  Reval  or  Petrograd  for  him- 
self, his  wife  and  daughters,  about  $3,000.  All  the 
rest,  he  said,  had  for  years  gone  back  into  the  estate 
itself  in  improvements,  and  particularly  into  a  rather 
ambitious  project  of  drainage  of  his  2,500  acres  of 
swamp  land.  The  parcelling  of  the  estate  into  small 
peasant  farms  which  could  be  worked  by  a  family  with 
two  horses  would  probably  stop  this  latter  work — 
unless  the  peasants  were  far-seeing  enough  to  combine 
into  some  sort  of  cooperative  scheme  of  drainage — 
and  would  mean  the  loss  to  the  owner  of  the  capital 
already  invested. 


REALITIES  OF  LAND  "REFORM"         137 

REVOLUTION  BY  ACT  OF  PARLIAMENT 

The  agrarian  law  passed  on  October  roth,  1919, 
had  given  the  Government  the  power  to  take  over 
"for  the  purpose  of  creating  a  land  reserve,"  any 
estates  belonging  to  the  Bait  nobility,  and,  roughly- 
speaking,  any  arable  land  except  that  owned  by  charit- 
able institutions,  or  by  farmers,  not  noble,  holding  less 
than  150  dessiatins  (about  400  acres).  Compensation 
for  the  land  itself  was  to  be  fixed  by  special  legislation 
later.  The  "inventory" — machinery,  animals,  etc., — 
was  to  be  appraised  at  its  value  in  roubles  in  1914,  and 
then  paid  for,  with  a  deduction  for  depreciation,  in 
Esthonian  marks  at  a  rate  of  exchange  to  be  fixed  by 
the  Government. 

The  land  thus  acquired  might  be  farmed  by  the 
State  itself,  or  leased  to  groups  of  farmers  for  cooper- 
ative farming,  but  the  main  purpose  of  the  law  was, 
of  course,  to  give  land  to  the  peasants.  The  estates 
were  to  be  parcelled  into  farms  small  enough  to  be 
worked  without  hired  help  by  an  average  family  with 
two  horses;  and  in  distributing  these  parcels,  prefer- 
ence was  to  be  given  to  soldiers  who  had  served  with 
special  bravery  at  the  front,  or  had  been  wounded, 
to  families  of  soldiers  who  had  been  killed,  and  to 
peasants  who  had  actually  lived  on  and  cultivated  the 
parcels  themselves  under  their  former  owners.  These 
new  farmers  were  to  have  a  six-year  trial.  If  their 
farming  was  then  regarded  as  satisfactory,  they  could 
remain  on  the  land  indefinitely,  and  even  hand  it  down 
to  their  children.  For  practical  purposes  they  were 
owners,  as  long  as  they  continued  properly  to  cultivate 


138         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

the  land,  although  strictly  speaking  ownership  rested 
with  the  State. 

The  enforcement  of  this  law,  or  indeed  of  any  regu- 
lation which  the  Reval  authorities  might  make,  was 
determined  by  a  multitude  of  local  conditions  over 
which  the  Reval  Government,  none  too  certain  of  it- 
self, naturally  had  slight  control.  Already  in  1919, 
before  the  law  was  passed,  many  estates  had  been 
taken  over  on  the  ground  that  the  owners  were  "trai- 
tors," or  that  they  were  not  cultivating  them  as  they 
should.  Yet  in  the  autumn  of  that  year  one  heard 
frequently  in  Reval  of  this  or  that  owner  who  had 
succeeded  in  "fixing"  things  with  the  local  land  officer 
so  that  he  might  harvest  his  crops,  and  although  the 
estate  was  theoretically  taken,  continue  to  live  there. 
On  one  estate  at  which  I  called,  the  owner,  Count  T., 
was  still  living  in  the  manor-house — a  wing  of  which 
was  occupied  by  the  Esthonian  supervisor,  theoreti- 
cally in  charge  of  the  property — and  at  tea  he  passed 
with  a  certain  sarcastic  enthusiasm  a  jar  of  honey  which 
the  superintendent  had  generously  permitted  him,  made 
by  his  own  bees. 

Here,  the  peasants  would  take  matters  into  their 
own  hands ;  say  what  they  must  have,  would  and  would 
not  do;  even  though  it  were  more  than  the  local  land 
officer  demanded;  and  in  another  neighborhood,  dis- 
mayed at  the  prospect  of  finding  machinery,  animals 
and  seed  for  themselves,  would  voluntarily  ask  the 
former  estate  owners  to  restore  the  old  arrangements. 
Some  local  officials  were  reasonable  and  conciliatory; 
others  dishonest  and  grasping.  An  owner  would  come 
up  to  Reval,  prove  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  Ministry 


REALITIES  OF  LAND  "REFORM"         139 

there  that  his  estate  was  well  run  and  should  not  be 
taken — the  theory  was  that  efficiently  cultivated,  mod- 
erate-sized estates  were  not  to  be  taken,  at  least  at 
first — get  a  promise  from  the  Minister  to  that  effect, 
and  return  to  the  country  only  to  find  the  local  Land 
Officer  already  in  possession.  And  when  this  hap- 
pened the  Reval  Government  was  not  likely  to  inter- 
fere. 

Accurate  figures  as  to  what  was  going  on  in  Esthonia 
at  this  time  were  very  hard  to  get.  One  would  have 
had  to  go  up  and  down  the  country,  covering  it  estate 
by  estate.  The  disagreements  between  Bait  and  Es- 
thonian  estimates  as  to  the  relative  amounts  of  land 
held  by  each  group;  whether  the  Baits  held  more  or 
less  than  half  the  land  and  the  kinds  of  land  which 
each  held,  may  be  passed  over  here.  They  have  a 
bearing  on  the  reality  of  the  land  hunger,  but  do  not 
change  the  actual  facts — that  an  aristocracy  was  being 
dispossessed  of  its  property  and  driven  out  of  its 
homes,  without  violence,  to  be  sure,  but  just  as  surely 
as  if  it  were  falling  back  before  cannon  and  machine 
guns. 

The  forests  were  taken  over  en  bloc  by  the  state  and 
a  superintendent  put  in  charge  who  was  not  infrequent- 
ly the  forester  formerly  employed  by  the  old  owner. 
The  curious  social  relations  which  resulted  when  the 
Baron  went  with  hat  figuratively  in  hand  to  buy  wood 
for  his  own  stoves  from  the  man  whose  hat  had  literally 
come  off  for  him  in  the  old  days,  may  readily  be  pic- 
tured. On  the  estate  which  I  have  just  described — 
only  the  forests  of  which  had  been  taken  over — I  was 
a  witness  of  such  a  scene.  The  supervisor  was  living 


in  the  house  formerly  occupied  by  the  Baron's  mother, 
on  an  outlying  part  of  his  property,  and  the  Baron 
drove  there  and  interviewed  him  as  he  sat  solemnly  at 
his  desk.  The  supervisor's  ponderous  gravity  and 
meticulous  interpretation  of  the  clauses  and  sub-clauses 
which,  evidently,  he  scarce  understood  himself;  the 
Baron's  uneasy  smiles  and  nods  and  unconvinced  as- 
sents, the  queer  air  of  unreality  and  acrid  farce  which 
hung  about  the  whole  scene  was  like  a  bit  out  of 
Gogol's  "Dead  Souls." 

To  put  the  control  and  division  of  the  appropriated 
estates  and  the  appraisal  of  the  "inventory"  into  the 
hands  of  brand-new  officials,  who  were  not  only  with- 
out any  training  or  tradition  of  professional  responsi- 
bility, but  the  more  or  less  active  enemies  of  those 
whose  property  they  were  handling,  was,  of  course,  an 
invitation  to  all  sorts  of  irregularity.  No  one  familiar 
with  graft  inquiries  at  home  will  be  surprised  to  find 
that  the  reports  of  a  committee  of  investigation  sent 
out  by  the  Constituent  Assembly  to  look  into  the  be- 
havior of  the  land  officials  should  be  peppered  by  such 
phrases  as  "does  not  understand  book-keeping  and  is 
entirely  indifferent  to  the  interests  of  the  property"; 
"pays  his  relatives  out  of  the  money  belonging  to  the 
estate";  "uses  the  property  in  such  a  wasteful  way  that 
he  is  practically  squandering  it,"  and  so  on.  One 
was  constantly  told  of  new  overseers  requisitioning  for 
their  own  uses  grain,  horses  and  cattle,  and  grafting  in 
a  petty  fashion  in  butter  and  milk. 

The  theoretical  compensation  for  the  inventory 
amounted,  when  finally  turned  into  Esthonian  marks, 


REALITIES  OF  LAND  "REFORM"         141 

to  almost  nothing.  One  owner  told  me,  how  correctly 
I  can  not  say,  that  the  amount  he  would  receive  if  his 
estate  were  taken  would  just  about  pay  for  the  copper 
fittings  in  his  distillery.  Another  who  had  come  up  to 
Reval  to  protest  against  the  appraisal  of  his  property 
said  that  two  horses  had  been  set  down  at  10  and  5 
roubles,  rather  than  less  than  $2  and  $1,  at  what  was 
then  the  value  of  the  Esthonian  mark.  A  pedigreed 
stallion  on  another  place  was  appraised  at  500  roubles 
or  10,000  marks  (less  than  $100).  An  ordinary  work 
horse  cost  then  in  the  open  market  at  least  20,000 
marks  and  this  animal,  it  was  said,  would  have  fetched 
at  least  100,000  Esthonian  marks.  There  was  even 
a  tale  of  a  library  table  appraised  at  a  few  marks,  the 
estimated  accumulated  depreciation  of  which  since 
1914  made  it  now  worth  less  than  nothing,  so  that  the 
owner  actually  owed  something  to  those  who  took  it 
away  from  him! 

While  such  stories  are  a  bit  too  good  to  be  true, 
they  show  how  the  wind  was  blowing,  or  seemed  to  be 
blowing,  to  the  Baits. 

A  pro-Bait  pamphlet,  Die  Agrarfrage  in  Estland, 
which  presented  a  variety  of  evidence  as  to  the  enforce' 
ment  of  the  land  law,  reported  a  somewhat  similar 
incident.  The  owner  of  the  estate  Kardina  which  had 
been  taken  over  before  the  law  went  into  effect,  had 
received  a  credit  of  70,800  Esthonian  marks  for  six 
of  his  forty  horses.  Later,  the  whole  forty  were  ap- 
praised at  61,000  marks,  and  the  owner  lost,  according 
to  this  authority,  not  only  his  horses,  but  had  to  pay 
9,800  marks  additional!  The  same  writer — Oskar 
Bernmann — told  of  horses  appraised  at  3  roubles  (60 


142         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

Esthonian  marks  at  that  time)  while  "the  horsehair 
for  a  violin  bow  cost  80  marks ;"  beds  at  from  2  roubles 
to  80  kopeks;  lamps  at  15  kopeks;  sofas  at  I  rouble, 
20  kopeks.  The  last  three  items  were  reported  from 
the  Estate  Lechts.  On  the  estate  Hark,  near  Reval, 
"cowbells  bought  in  1917  were  reckoned  to  have  de- 
preciated 80%  and  horse  chains  bought  in  the  same 
year  to  be  depreciated  58%.  The  distillery  of  the  estate 
Kappo  was  valued  at  2,124  roubles  (42,000  Esthonian 
marks)  the  price  of  a  good  work-horse.  In  Morras 
plows  were  appraised  at  84  kopeks;  whole  mills  at 
from  80  roubles  upwards.  Mills  and  sawmills  in  Som- 
merhusen  were  worth  together,  according  to  the  Com- 
mission, 150  roubles  (3,000  Esthonian  marks,  the 
price  of  two  pairs  of  shoes),  while  mills  at  Allenkull 
and  Sellie  with  turbine  equipment  were  appraised  at 
from  420  to  545  roubles  (about  10,000  Esthonian 
marks) — "the  price  of  a  poor  typewriter,"  and  so  on. 
One  of  the  Bait  members  of  the  Constituent  As- 
sembly, returning  from  a  visit  to  the  country,  addressed 
to  the  Prime  Minister  a  characteristic  lament,  in  which 
he  said  that  he  felt  it  his  duty  to  warn  him  of  the  dan- 
ger threatening  Esthonia's  whole  agricultural  indus- 
try. The  letter  was  published  in  the  Revaler  Bote,  a 
Bait  newspaper,  on  May  loth,  1920. 

"The  small,  but  for  several  decades  very  efficiently 
managed  estate  of  Waykull,  whose  former  owner  I 
represent,"  said  the  letter,  "has  been  taken  over  by 
the  Government  although  it  was  clearly  stated  that 
estates  not  necessary  to  parcel  would  not  be  taken, 
provided  they  were  properly  managed. 

"Several  months  ago  the  Government  Land  Officer 


REALITIES  OF  LAND  "REFORM"         143 

in  Wierland  proposed  to  my  superintendent  in  Waykull 
that  they  might  make  an  arrangement  according  to 
which  they  could  operate  the  estate  together.  It  goes 
without  saying  that  I  declined  the  proposal.  On 
March  12th,  my  manager  was  suddenly  removed  from 
his  position  and  the  management  of  the  estate  turned 
over  to  the  laborers  on  it,  although  the  estate  itself 
was  not  as  yet  taken  over.  To  my  protest  I  received 
the  answer,  after  eleven  days,  that  my  manager  might 
remain  at  his  post,  but  that  the  division  of  the  work 
on  the  estate  should  be  given  to  the  overseer.  The 
same  Herr  Waher  (the  State  representative)  high- 
handedly took  from  the  estate  flour,  potatoes,  groats, 
and  wood  without  paying  anything  for  it,  with  the  ex- 
planation that  he  had  a  right  so  to  do  and  was  sending 
all  these  things  to  his  own  house.  In  addition  he  de- 
manded horses  from  the  estate,  and  finally  did  take  a 
horse  and  brought  it  back  only  after  several  days.  To 
my  protest  to  the  Land  Ministry  I  received  the  reply 
that  my  complaints  were  Very  exaggerated'. 

".  .  .  The  farm  work  for  the  past  month  and  a 
half  has  been  so  demoralized  that  indispensable  spring 
work,  especially  seeding,  has  been  brought  to  a  stand- 
still and  the  larger  part  of  the  seed-potatoes  have  al- 
ready begun  to  sprout. 

"The  same  Waher,  a  few  weeks  ago,  after  I  had  sold 
300  poods  (about  12,000  pounds)  of  oats  at  the  com- 
mand of  the  food  administration  in  Wesenberg,  or- 
dered the  oats  unloaded  and  held  although  the  estate 
has  several  thousand  poods  of  oats  on  hand — twice  as 
much  as  is  needed  for  seeding  and  feed. 

"The  appraisal  of  the  estate's  inventory  was  set  on 
April  1 3th  for  April  2Oth,  although  according  to  the 
law  a  fortnight  is  provided.  As  it  is  impossible  in  the 
country  to  find  experts  in  so  short  a  time,  I  went  to  the 
Land  Ministry  where  I  received  the  answer  that,  while 
it  was  not  according  to  law,  yet  for  technical  reasons  it 
was  impossible  to  do  otherwise,  and  that  I  always 
could  make  a  protest.  The  only  result  of  a  protest 
would  be  that  a  new  appraisal  would  come  in  the  time 


144         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

of  hardest  work  when  the  horses  would  be  worn  out 
and  the  machinery  damaged  and  that  the  owner  would 
be  punished  by  waiting  several  months  longer  for  his 
pay.  It  might  be  observed  here  that  the  estate  be- 
longs to  the  Family  S.,  of  the  three  sons  of  which,  one 
fell  fighting  in  the  ranks  with  our  troops,  while  the 
others  were  killed  by  the  Bolsheviki.  .  .  . 

.  .  .  "The  same  Waher  took  from  the  Estate 
Modders,  which  is  not  yet  taken  over  by  the  Govern- 
ment, 3  stofs  of  milk  and  also  wood,  naturally  without 
paying  anything  for  it  ...  said  Waher  keeps  no  rec- 
ords of  his  land  parcelling.  In  Kurkiill  he  started  to 
parcel  the  branch  estate  of  Wohu  whereby  the  central 
farm  was  left  without  hay.  In  Poll,  only  the  branch 
estate  was  to  have  been  parcelled,  but  he  has  already 
taken  part  of  the  fields  from  the  central  estate.  Mod- 
ders, that  was  to  have  been  unparcelled,  he  has  al- 
ready divided  and  arbitrarily  seized  several  barns  and 
put  people  to  live  in  them.  In  Innis,  before  taking 
over  the  estate,  he  permitted  the  laborers  to  remove 
from  the  forest  wood  already  cut  belonging  to  the 
owner. 

.  .  .  "The  Land  Officer  Laur  in  Piihajoggi,  with- 
out following  the  decrees  of  the  local  court,  arbitrarily 
divided  the  estate  of  Tiirpsal,  Ontika,  and  Toila, 
where  first-class  cultivation  existed.  To  the  former 
owners  are  left  only  80  dessiatins.  Sound  farming 
methods  are  impossible;  first,  because  the  decrees  of 
the  local  court  are  not  observed  and  secondly  because 
there  is  nothing  left  with  which  cultivation  can  support 
itself.  Especially  is  this  the  case  where  land,  broken 
for  the  first  time,  is  unexpectedly  taken  away  from  its 
owners,  and  the  impulse  to  work  destroyed.  .  .  . 
Against  the  Superintendent  Lais,  in  Mettapah,  there 
is  already  lodged  an  accusation  of  theft  and  sale  of 
alcohol.  The  alcohol  was  found  by  N.  in  the  village 
of  K.  ...  The  demoralization  in  the  district  is  so 
great  that  on  several  estates  it  is  impossible  to  continue 
farming.  .  .  ." 


REALITIES  OF  LAND  "REFORM"         145 

A  Bait,  writing  to  me  from  Reval,  early  in  1921, 
said:  "I  have  just  on  my  desk  the  protocol  of  the 
taxation  of  the  inventory  of  my  sister's  estate,  which 
took  place  some  days  ago.  The  distillery,  the  electric 
station,  73  cows,  32  horses,  sheep,  pigs,  agricultural 
machinery,  wagons  and  sledges,  grain,  hay,  altogether 
are  taxed  for  320,000  Esthonian  marks,  or  about 
$900.  For  this  price  it  will  be  expropriated  after  May 
first.  My  sister  is  ruined.  How  long  can  she  live 
on  the  interest  of  $900?" 

With  the  intention  of  seeing  some  of  these  parcelled 
estates  as  the  Esthonians  saw  them  I  one  day  accom- 
panied the  Minister  of  Agriculture  and  several  of  his 
associates  on  a  tour  through  some  of  the  expropriated 
farms  near  Reval.  On  one,  the  owner's  house  had 
been  turned  into  a  school-house — one  of  the  purposes 
for  which  it  was  generally  argued  the  manor-houses 
were  needed.  Two  rooms  had  been  fitted  with  benches 
and  some  old  Russian  charts.  The  school  was  not  in 
session  and  the  rest  of  the  house,  with*  the  exception 
of  several  rooms  occupied  by  the  young  school-master 
and  a  sort  of  land-clerk,  was  empty. 

The  new  tenants  were  lodged  in  various  outbuild- 
ings, and  on  one  part  of  the  estate  several  new  cot- 
tages were  slowly  going  up.  The  lack  of  resources 
of  all  these  new  farmers — one  had  been  a  blacksmith 
on  the  estate,  another  was  a  cobbler  from  Reval — was 
very  noticeable,  and  the  whole  air  of  the  place  was 
less  shipshape  than  it  would  have  been,  undoubtedly, 
before  the  estate  was  taken  over,  yet  at  least  the 


146 

thing  was  really  working.  Those  to  whom  we  talked 
seemed  hopeful,  and  the  stand  of  grain  on  parts  of 
the  estate  which  had  been  given  out  the  preceeding 
autumn  suggested  what  the  whole  might  with  good 
luck  become  when  the  new  farmers  had  had  a  fair 
chance. 

On  another  estate  we  ran  into  one  of  those  disputes 
which  must  be  very  common  in  this  transition  period. 
Two  peasants  laid  claim  to  the  same  land.  One  was 
a  returned  soldier  and  a  farm  had  been  given  him  as 
a  veteran  of  the  war.  The  other  was  the  son  of  a 
peasant  who  had  lived  on  the  land  under  the  old  owner 
and  some  authority,  either  the  central  government  or 
local  board,  had  given  him  the  farm  for  that  reason. 
For  the  better  part  of  two  hours  the  two  peasants 
stated  their  cases,  repeating  them  over  and  over  again 
in  stolid,  stubborn,  solemn  peasant  fashion,  while  the 
officials  from  Reval  chewed  grass,  looked  wise,  and 
tried  to  hit  on  a  solution.  It  was  finally  decided  that 
there  was  enough  land  for  both.  The  disputed  tract 
was  therefore  divided,  and  leaving  the  details  of  the 
decision  to  be  worked  out  later,  we  motored  back  to 
town. 

I  mentioned  to  the  Minister  several  specific  instances 
similar  to  those  reported  in  the  complaint  already 
quoted  and  spoke  also  of  some  of  the  more  general 
objections  which  might  be  made  to  the  government's 
policy.  The  difficulty,  not  to  say  impossibility,  of  find- 
ing animals  and  machinery  for  all  these  new  farms 
was  a  very  pertinent  argument  for  proceeding  more 
slowly  with  the  breaking  up  of  the  estates.  Esthonia 
was  not  another  Belgium,  either  in  soil  or  in  its  near- 


REALITIES  OF  LAND  "REFORM"         147 

ness  to  great  city  markets, — it  was  yet  to  be  proved 
that  small  parcels,  intensively  cultivated,  were  prac- 
ticable. It  seemed  no  more  than  just  that  the  estate 
owners  should  be  permitted  to  keep  at  least  their 
houses  and  the  150  dessiatins  allowed  to  non-noble 
owners. 

The  replies  of  the  Minister,  an  agreeable  and  out- 
wardly reasonable  person,  showed  plainly  that  political 
and  social  rather  than  agrarian  problems,  strictly 
speaking,  were  the  main  preoccupations  of  the  new 
regime.  They  were,  he  said,  founding  a  new  nation. 
Time  was  flying — the  chance  might  not  come  again. 
Something  must  be  done  to  meet  Bolshevik  competition 
in  the  present,  and  as  solid  a  defense  as  possible  pre- 
pared against  the  demands  of  a  great  Russia  that  might 
later  arise  from  the  revolution.  They  must  have  citi- 
zens with  a  real  stake  in  the  success  of  an  independent 
Esthonia,  loyal  to  the  new  Government  and  ready  to 
fight  for  it.  The  way  to  get  such  a  body  of  citizens 
was  to  build  up  a  population  of  peasant  proprietors 
or  small  farmers.  As  for  some  of  the  acts  which 
struck  me  as  unjust,  they  must  be  viewed  not  merely 
as  attacks  on  property,  but  also  in  the  light  of  the 
owners'  loyalty  to  the  Esthonian  Government. 

In  other  words,  what  was  going  on  here,  was,  as 
has  already  been  suggested,  not  an  agrarian  reform, 
but  an  agrarian  revolution.  The  weapons  employed 
were  appraisal  boards,  land  officers  and  an  act  of  par- 
liament, but  the  Esthonians  were  at  war,  none  the  less. 
Their  point  of  view  was  put  even  more  clearly  to  me 
one  day  by  one  of  the  secretaries  in  the  Foreign  Office. 
To  any  questioning  of  the  justice  of  the  expropriations. 


148        NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

he  gave  the  answer  that  the  Esthonians  were  merely 
righting  an  ancient  injustice,  and  taking  back  lands 
that  seven  hundred  years  ago  had  been  taken  away 
from  them. 

"But  seven  hundred  years  is  a  long  time,"  I  said. 
"Do  you  suppose  that  our  Indians  could  come  down 
to  lower  Broadway  and  take  over  a  lot  of  office-build- 
ings because  their  ancestors  may  have  sold  the  land 
there  for  a  few  beads?" 

He  listened  with  entire  equanimity.  "If  your  In- 
dians," he  said,  "were  in  as  big  a  majority  in  America 
as  we  are  in  Esthonia — about  95  per  cent — very  likely 
they  would !" 

A  revolution  is  generally  justified  by  its  success,  and 
the  outcome  of  this  social  and  agrarian  revolt  will 
depend  largely  on  the  result  of  Esthonia's  political 
revolt  against  Russia.  Some  of  the  Bait  proprietors 
have  declined  to  acknowledge  the  new  regime  to  the 
extent  of  accepting  the  compensation  offered  for  their 
property,  preferring  to  await  the  judgment  of  the 
future.  That  Esthonia  itself  might  change  without 
waiting  for  Russia  to  change,  was  suggested  by  the 
drift  to  the  Right  in  the  elections  of  November,  1920, 
and  the  return,  a  few  months  later,  of  Mr.  Pacts  to 
the  Ministry,  although  the  first  effect  of  his  return 
seemed  to  be  rather  to  hasten  than  to  retard  the 
tempo  of  expropriation.  In  any  case,  it  is  easier  to 
knock  Humpty  Dumpty  off  the  wall  than  to  put  him 
together  again,  and  easier  to  put  new  owners  on  the 
land  than  to  take  them  from  it. 


CHAPTER  VII 
LATVIA  AND  THE  LETTS 

A  CERTAIN  amount  of  confusion  in  regard  to  Latvia 
and  the  Letts  is  a  mere  matter  of  names.  Latvia, 
Lettland,  Livonia,  Livland,  Courland  and  Latgale,  are 
among  the  names  used  in  reference  to  a  little  country 
only  about  half  again  as  large  as  Switzerland.  Rus- 
sia's Baltic  Provinces,  strictly  speaking,  were  Esthonia, 
Livonia  and  Courland.  The  majority  of  the  inhabi- 
tants in  Courland,  the  southernmost  of  the  three,  are 
Letts.  Livonia,  in  the  middle,  was  divided  between 
Letts  and  Esthonians.  The  enw  Esthonia  takes  the 
northern  fringe  of  Livonia.  The  southern  part  joins 
with  Courland  and  a  district  east  of  it,  known  as 
Latgale,  to  make  the  new  state  of  Latvia.  Lettland 
and  Livland  are  merely  other  forms  for  Latvia  and 
Livonia. 

Substituting  Letts  for  Esthonians,  the  past  history 
and  present  problems  of  Latvia  are  similar  to  those  of 
Esthonia.  The  Letts  were  conquered  by  the  Teutonic 
Knights  and  made  serfs.  They,  too,  had  their  periods 
of  foreign  domination — Swedish,  Polish,  and  finally 
Russian — and  Riga  was  an  old  Hanseatic  town  before 
the  Great  Peter  set  up  his  "window  on  Europe"  in  the 
Neva  marshes.  Liberation  from  serfdom  and  the 
development  of  a  national  spirit  and  an  intellectually 
conscious  class  was,  roughly  speaking,  coincident  with 
that  of  Esthonia, 

140 


150        NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

One  of  the  interesting  things  about  Europe,  however, 
is  the  dramatic  differences  so  often  found  on  crossing 
an  all  but  invisible  frontier.  Journeys  no  longer  than 
those  made  for  week-end  vacations  at  home — or  even 
between  suburban  homes  and  a  downtown  office  (like 
the  hour's  ride  between  Petrograd  and  the  Finnish 
frontier,  for  instance)  take  one  to  another  race,  speech, 
religion,  a  different  civilization  altogether.  The  Es- 
thonians  are  of  remote  Mongolian  origin;  the  Letts, 
like  the  Lithuanians,  are  non-Slavic,  Indo-Europeans. 
They  speak  a  different  language,  are,  in  fact,  a  different 
people,  although  as  you  travel  through  the  pleasant, 
level,  timber-broken  country,  there  is  no  more  to  mark 
the  boundary  than  there  is  between  Indiana  and  Illinois. 

No  great  amount  of  love  is  lost  between  the  two,  al- 
though they  are  in  the  same  boat,  politically,  and  one 
way  to  get  at  their  respective  temperaments  is  to  listen 
to  what  each  says  about  the  other  and  himself.  An 
Esthonian  will  cheerfully  admit  that  he  is  rugged,  de- 
pendable, hard-working,  plain-spoken,  realistic, — in  a 
word,  masculine;  while  the  Letts,  he  intimates,  are 
voluble,  undependable,  frivolous  and  all  for  show. 
The  Lett  pictures  the  Esthonian  as  heavy,  obstinate, 
suspicious,  grasping,  while  pointing  out  that  his  own 
people  are  idealistic,  vivacious,  unselfish  and  reason- 
able, or,  as  he  concludes  with  a  bright  smile,  more 
"Southern". 

The  Letts  are  "southern"  in  the  same  sense  that 
Bowling  Green  is  south  of  Harlem,  and  yet,  oddly 
enough,  there  does  seem  to  be  a  little  something  in 
what  they  say.  The  Lettish  politicians  I  met  in  Riga 
did  seem  rather  more  lively  and  flexible  than  the  cor- 


LATVIA  AND  THE  LETTS  151 

responding  types  in  Reval.  One  explanation  may  be 
that  Riga,  the  Latvian  capital,  was,  before  the  war, 
a  big  cosmopolitan  town  of  more  'than  half  a  million 
people,  and  that  these  Lettish  leaders  are  "city  folks,'* 
comparatively  speaking. 

The  touchiness  of  the  two  peoples  towards  each 
other  was  illustrated  by  the  dispute  over  the  border 
town  of  Walk.  The  point  at  which  nationalism  passes 
from  the  sublime  to  do  something  else  may  be  difficult 
to  fix,  but  little  doubt  of  its  whereabouts  remained  in 
the  minds  of  the  unhappy  travellers  who  had  to  worm 
their  way,  during  the  summer  of  1920,  through  the 
patriotic  atmosphere  surrounding  this  dreary  vil- 
lage. It  was  a  concrete  example  of  the  apparently 
unlimited  capacity  of  human  beings  to  wax  enthusi- 
astic over  the  general  idea  of  patriotism  and  gladly  to 
squander  on  it  a  self-sacrifice  and  stubbornness  rarely 
to  be  extracted  from  them  for  the  personal  and  par- 
ticular affairs  of  everyday  life. 

Walk  is  a  place  of  about  ten  or  fifteen  thousand 
people  situated  near  the  ethnological  boundary.  North- 
ward people  begin  to  speak  Esthonian;  southward, 
Lettish.  But  there  are  streaks  and  islands  of  both 
races  on  both  sides  of  the  town.  In  the  old  Russian 
days  this  made  little  difference,  inasmuch  as  both 
Esthonia  and  what  is  now  Latvia  were  Russian,  politi- 
cally, and  Walk  a  mere  junction-point  on  the  Reval- 
Riga  line. 

Independence  changed  all  this,  and  Walk — which 
most  casual  visitors  would  gladly  sell  for  a  jack-knife 
and  a  few  beads — rose  to  a  position  of  vital  strategic 


152         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

importance.  Both  sides  claimed  it.  Without  it,  each 
was  "cut  off,"  "strangled,"  unable  to  exist.  Press 
and  politicians  of  both  countries  supported  their  re- 
spective claims  with  the  arguments,  threats,  and  appeals 
to  patriotism  and  national  honor,  invariably  employed 
in  such  cases.  Stripped  by  war  as  they  were,  both 
countries  nevertheless  rallied  to  the  idea  of  defending 
Walk  as  if  that  spot  embodied  all  they  held  most  dear. 
There  was  actual  likelihood  of  war  when  the  British 
Military  Mission  stepped  in  with  an  offer  of  arbitra- 
tion. British  Officers  motored  all  over  the  surround- 
ing country,  until  the  already  limited  local  supply  of 
gasoline  was  well-nigh  exhausted — not  greatly  to  the 
enthusiasm  of  the  militarists  of  either  side — and 
handed  down  a  decision. 

The  line  was  run  through  the  middle  of  the  town. 
The  Esthonians  got  the  more  important  part,  including 
the  railway  station,  while  the  Letts  received  various 
strips  of  territory  which  it  was  hoped  would  serve 
as  substitutes.  The  Letts  promptly  tore  up  the  track 
for  several  kilometres,  and  withdrew  to  a  station  of 
their  own.  This  hindered  when  it  did  not  prevent 
the  shipment  of  heavy  goods.  They  had  already 
changed  the  gauge  from  Russian  to  standard — partly 
to  keep  the  Esthonians  from  sending  armored  trains 
down  into  Latvia — and  the  traveller,  in  addition  to 
changing  cars,  now  had  to  tramp  across  the  interval. 

A  barbed-wire  entanglement  zigzagged  through 
Walk  and  sentries  stalked  solemnly  in  front  of  it  with 
fixed  bayonets.  This  "frontier"  was  closed  between 
ten  at  night  and  seven  in  the  morning,  and  the  time- 
tables so  arranged  that  no  matter  how  the  traveller 


LATVIA  AND  THE  LETTS  153 

fixed  it,  he  must  kick  his  heels  in  Walk  for  from 
eighteen  to  twenty-four  hours.  There  were  even  re- 
finements on  the  obvious  discomforts  of  these  waits 
and  of  trains  that  left  at  three  in  the  morning.  And 
after  arriving  in  Walk  at  midnight,  waiting  through 
the  next  day,  and  staying  awake  the  next  night  for 
fear  of  missing  the  train,  I  stumbled  forth  at  two  in 
the  morning  cross  country,  only  to  find  at  the  station 
that  the  Letts  had  a  patriotic  time  of  their  own,  an 
hour  and  a  half  ahead  of  Esthonian  time — although 
Latvia  is  west  of  Esthonia — and  that  the  three  o'clock 
train  was  already  on  its  way  to  Riga ! 

The  Letts  were  about  a  year  behind  the  Esthonians 
in  getting  their  national  organization  started — it  was 
just  a  week  after  the  Armistice  that  a  National  Coun- 
cil representing  all  party  groups,  except  the  extreme 
Left  Socialists  and  the  Conservative  Baits,  met  in 
Riga  and  declared  Latvia  an  independent  Republic — 
and  their  orderly  progress  was  hindered  during  the 
ensuing  year,  not  only  by  the  same  difficulties  the 
Esthonians  had  to  meet,  but  by  the  active  interference 
of  German  and  Russian  troops  under  Generals  von 
der  Goltz  and  Bermondt. 

The  National  Council  appointed  a  Ministry,  headed 
by  Karl  Ulmannis,  a  Lett  who  had  spent  several  years 
in  America  and  been  an  instructor  in  the  University  of 
Nebraska,  drew  up  a  rough  Constitution  and  decreed 
that  the  cabinet  should  act  as  a  provisional  govern- 
ment until  a  general  election  should  be  held  for  a 
national  assembly. 

Before  this  government  could  establish  itself  firmly, 
it  was  driven  from  Riga  to  Libau  by  the  Bolshevik  in- 


154        NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

vasion  of  the  succeeding  January.  And  in  April  it 
Was  ousted  by  the  Bait  Landeswehr,  acting  with  the 
approval,  if  not  the  active  help  of  General  von  der 
Goltz,  and  a  new  cabinet,  headed  by  a  Lutheran  pastor, 
Needra,  put  in  its  place.  Needra  was  honest  and 
patriotic  in  the  opinion  of  the  Allied  commissioners 
on  the  spot,  but  they  also  felt  that  the  coup  d'etat  was 
an  unjustifiable  act  of  violence,  and  after  much  wrang- 
ling, and  some  pressure,  Needra  withdrew  in  July, 
1919,  and  a  new  cabinet  with  Ulmannis  again  at  its 
head,  took  the  power. 

The  Allied  Commissioners  insisted  that  the  Baits, 
who  included  not  only  landed  proprietors,  as  in  Es- 
thonia,  but  a  considerable  portion  of  the  solid  citizens 
of  Riga,  should  be  represented  in  the  Government,  and 
two  were  thus  chosen  as  Minister  of  Justice  and  of 
Finance.  There  was  one  curious  moment  during  the 
summer  of  1919,  when  a  clash  between  the  Esthonians 
and  the  Bait  Landeswehr  along  the  frontier  brought 
the  Esthonians  hotfoot  almost  to  the  gates  of  Riga. 
They  actually  began  to  shell  this  supposedly  friendly 
city  and  might  have  taken  it  and — so  they  urged — • 
disposed  of  the  German  element  altogether,  had  not 
the  Allied  representatives  interposed  and  forced  an 
armistice.  There  was  another  moment,  scarcely  less 
curious,  in  the  late  autumn  just  before  the  Dorpat  con- 
ference, when  the  troops  of  the  Russian  adventurer, 
Bermondt,  together  with  the  "Iron  Division" — a  body 
of  German  troops  who  had  been  promised,  or  thought 
they  had  been  promised,  land  in  Courland  by  the 
Ulmannis  Government  in  return  for  service  against 
the  Bolsheviks — laid  siege  to  Riga.  The  Letts  threw 


LATVIA  AND  THE  LETTS  155 

up  barricades  and  fought  back  and  forth  across  the 
Duna  river  and  had  they  not  been  supported  by  several 
British  and  French  destroyers  might  very  well  have 
lost  the  town. 

These  dangers  were  passed,  the  army  strengthened, 
the  Government  began  to  stabilize  itself,  and  in  April, 
1920,  elections  were  held  for  the  Constituent  Assembly. 
About  one-third  of  the  delegates  returned  were  from 
the  so-called  Peasant,  or  Farmers'  Union  Party,  to 
which  Ulmannis  belonged;  about  one-third  were  Social 
Democrats;  and  the  remainder  represented  various 
minority  groups,  including  the  conservative  Baits.  This 
Assembly  confirmed  Ulmannis  as  Minister  president 
and  asked  him  to  form  a  new  Cabinet,  and  then  pro- 
ceeded to  the  discussion  of  the  constitution  and  the 
settlement  of  the  all-important  problem  of  the  land. 

LETTISH  INTELLIGENTSIA 

It  was  while  the  Bermondt  adventure  was  still  un- 
decided in  the  early  winter  of  1919  that  I  first  saw 
the  pleasant  old  town  of  Riga  and  met  some  of  the 
Lettish  leaders.  The  city — it  had  more  than  half  a 
million  people  before  the  war — lay  like  a  run-down 
clock.  Bermondt  was  on  the  west  bank  of  the  Duna; 
the  Letts  held  the  east  bank  and  the  main  town. 
Trenches  ran  through  the  narrow,  cobblestoned  streets 
close  to  the  river  and  those  running  down  to  the  Duna 
were  blocked  by  barricades.  There  was  constant  snip- 
ing from  rifles  and  machine-guns  back  and  forth  across 
the  stream  and  all  day  long,  now  up  this  street,  now 
down  that,  came  the  desultory  detonation  of  shells, 
and  the  rumble  and  crash  of  falling  masonry  and  glass. 


156        NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

It  was  to  this  accompaniment  that  I  met  Premier 
Ulmannis,  and  had  various  glimpses  of  the  Lettish  in- 
telligentsia. Ulmannis  himself  had  fled  to  America 
when  the  reaction  set  in  after  the  revolution  of  1905 
and  at  the  end  of  a  few  years  found  himself  instructor 
in  agriculture  in  the  University  of  Nebraska.  He 
might  have  become  a  professor  shortly,  and  written  a 
book  on  the  making  of  an  American,  but  one  romance 
of  this  sort  was  not  enough  for  the  sanguine,  bushy- 
haired  Lett,  and  like  many  another  half-Americanized 
immigrant  now  helping  to  build  these  new  states,  he 
returned  to  his  native  land  when  war  and  revolution 
had  made  it  a  new  "new  country." 

He  seemed  one  of  those  argonauts  who  had  got 
nothing  but  good  from  his  American  adventure — 
easier  manners,  broader  outlook,  more  tolerant  point 
of  view.  With  none  of  that  overpowering  gravity 
which  sometimes  afflicts  these  aspiring  statesmen,  he 
went  at  once  to  the  things  a  stranger  wanted  to  know, 
chatted  frankly  and  with  humor,  and  put  at  my  dis- 
posal a  young  lieutenant  who  spoke  a  half  a  dozen  lan- 
guages and  had  nothing  to  do  for  several  days  but 
show  me  about. 

The  Foreign  Minister,  Mr.  Meyerovitch,  a  tall, 
dark,  fluent  young  man  of  not  more  than  thirty-five, 
was  another  interesting  example  of  the  possibilities  in 
such  new  states — of  the  young  men,  that  is  to  say,  of 
comparatively  simple  origin,  who  in  the  old  days,  might 
have  been  lawyers,  professors  or  journalists,  and  are 
now  suddenly  become  statesmen,  with  their  fingers  in 
world  politics.  The  son  of  a  school-teacher,  with  his 
Lettishness  sharpened  by  a  touch  of  Jewish  blood, 


LATVIA  AND  THE  LETTS  157 

he  spoke  English  and  French,  as  well  as  Russian,  Ger- 
man and  Lettish,  and  seemed  as  much  at  home  as  if 
trained  a  diplomat. 

The  rapid  industrial  and  commercial  growth  of 
Riga  before  the  war  had  assisted  in  the  building  up 
there  of  an  untitled,  Bait  bourgeoisie,  not  altogether 
unlike  the  rich  Moscow  merchant  families,  and  almost 
as  proud  and  self-sufficient  as  the  landed  gentry  them- 
selves. The  Minister  of  Finance,  Mr.  Ehrhardt,  was 
one  of  these — a  pleasant-mannered,  slightly  quizzical, 
business-man  politician,  who  had  served  in  the  old 
Russian  Duma  as  well  as  at  the  head  of  one  of  the 
large  industrial  concerns  of  Riga.  He  talked  of  music, 
pictures  and  people  as  well  as  of  business  and  politics, 
with  a  betwixt-and-between  manner  characteristic  of 
some  of  the  more  flexible  Baits;  of  the  standing  be- 
tween Russia  and  Germany,  and  was  able,  according 
to  his  mood,  to  accent  the  energy  and  tough-minded- 
ness  of  the  one  or  the  "broad-nature"  and  speculative 
enthusiasm  of  the  other.  He  seemed  loyal  to  Lettish 
independence  and  said  that  most  Baits  were  willing 
to  work  for  it,  and  added,  whimsically,  that  the  Letts 
were  more  excited  in  their  hatred  than  the  facts  war- 
ranted. There  were  only  about  170,000  Baits  in  the 
two  provinces,  anyway,  and  as  they  had  no  peasant 
class  to  build  up  from,  they  were  dying  out,  so  why 
couldn't  the  majority  take  things  calmly? 

My  guide  was  a  Doctor  of  Philosophy — his  grand- 
father had  been  a  peasant — he  spoke  English  easily, 
and  was  interested  in  everything  from  politics  to  fu- 
turist cafes.  After  we  had  visited  the  barricades,  we 
went  to  a  newspaper  office  on  the  edge  of  the  section 


158         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

under  bombardment.  The  building  had  already  been 
hit  several  times,  the  City  Room  had  been  moved  into 
the  interior,  and  with  its  short-haired  girls  smoking 
cigarettes  and  scribbling  copy,  and  volunteers  drop- 
ping in  from  sentry-duty  with  rifles  slung  across  their 
shoulders,  it  reminded  one  of  a  play  about  some  secret 
printing-office  in  the  romantic  days  of  the  old  regime. 

The  editor  invited  me  to  a  quieter  room  to  talk  with 
some  of  his  friends,  all  enthusiastic  Letts — a  dark  little 
poet,  with  thick  spectacles  and  thick  black  hair  grow- 
ing low  on  his  forehead;  a  futurist  painter  just  in  from 
the  trenches;  and  a  pale,  thinly-bearded  gentleman  in 
a  rusty  overcoat,  who  looked  as  if  he  had  just  stepped 
from  "La  Vie  de  Boheme."  They  were  more  radical 
than  the  Ministers,  more  like  those  who  had  the  upper 
hand  in  Esthonia. 

The  paper  had  backed  the  Ulmannis  Government, 
the  editor  said,  because  they  thought  all  Letts  should 
stand  behind  it  for  the  moment,  but  later  they  hoped 
to  come  out  stronger  for  purely  Lettish  interests.  The 
Government  was  too  lenient  with  the  Baits.  Why  was 
there  any  need  of  a  separate  Bait  Landeswehr  (it  was 
later  merged  with  the  Lettish  army) ,  it  had  overthrown 
Ulmannis  once,  who  could  say  they  wouldn't  try  it 
again? 

To  my  suggestion  that  it  was  the  Baits'  fatherland, 
too,  and  that  the  two  groups  ought  to  work  together, 
the  young  men  listened  gravely  and  began  talking  rap- 
idly in  Lettish.  My  guide  explained  that  they  thought 
I  didn't  understand  how  much  their  people  had  had 
to  stand  from  the  Baits.  The  latter  were  not  an  op- 


LATVIA  AND  THE  LETTS  159 

pressed  minority — the  Government  hadn't  been  stiff 
enough. 

I  asked  if  they  thought  that  Latvia  would  be  able 
to  keep  her  independence  when  Russia  was  herself 
again.  Yes,  they  said,  they  did;  if  the  non-Russian 
border  peoples  got  together  in  a  defensive  alliance, 
old  Russia  would  have  some  trouble  in  coercing  them. 
But  they  would  like  to  ask  me  a  question.  Did  the 
Allies,  who  had  encouraged  them  to  declare  their  in- 
dependence, really  believe  in  it?  Or  were  they  merely 
being  used  because  the  Allies  thought  their  own  sol- 
diers too  good  to  send  against  the  Bolsheviks?  I  said 
I  thought  most  outsiders  would  like  to  see  them  have 
all  the  independence  that  was  politically  and  econom- 
ically practicable.  If  our  government  had  done  noth- 
ing toward  recognizing  them  it  was  because  it  felt  it 
best  to  wait  about  settling  the  status  of  the  border 
states  until  Russia  was  better  able  to  speak  for  herself. 

The  little  black  poet,  the  writer  and  painter  had  left 
talk  to  the  editor,  but  when  I  asked  the  former  two 
about  their  own  work  and  whether  they  actually  wrote 
in  Lettish  instead  of  in  Russian,  they  woke  up  and  be- 
gan to  ask  questions.  Who  was  our  great  poet  now? 
Who  could  be  translated  into  Lettish,  for  instance? 
They  all  knew  Poe  in  translation,  and  Emerson,  but 
who  was  worth  translating  now?  They  had  read  some 
of  Jack  London's  stories  in  Russian,  and  thought  them 
all  very  well  in  a  certain  field,  but  who  could  be  called 
in  any  large  sense  American? 

The  pale  gentleman  in  the  rusty  overcoat  spoke  with 
much  feeling  on  the  subject,  he  seemed  to  feel  an  al. 


160         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

most  personal  grief  in  the  fact  that  American  writers 
had  so  little  to  say.  Why  was  it  that  a  nation  so  great 
as  America  should  not  have  writers  to  express  that 
greatness?  Perhaps,  he  suggested,  we  were  waiting  a 
renaissance?  They,  the  Letts,  were  now  in  the  midst 
of  theirs;  they  had  begun  to  wake  up  about  half  a 
century  ago.  Did  I  think  it  would  help  toward  getting 
recognition  of  their  independence  if  some  of  their 
Lettish  writers  were  translated  into  English?  .  .  . 

Skirting  the  leeward  side  of  the  narrow,  twisting 
streets  of  the  "Old  Town" — for  Riga  also  has  its 
seven  hundred  years  of  history — we  looked  into  the 
square  in  front  of  the  Black  Head  House,  from  which 
the  Letts  were  firing  a  trench  mortar  over  their  own 
roofs  and  across  the  river.  The  Schwartz-hdupterhaus 
was  originally  built  in  1330  and  a  thousand  memories  of 
the  tangled  history  of  this  Baltic  world  crisscross 
about  its  high  gabled  facade,  with  the  Saint  George  on 
the  roof-tree,  and  King  Arthur  on  the  clock,  and  across 
the  front  the  arms  of  the  ancient  Hansa  towns  of  Riga, 
Hamburg,  Bremen  and  Lubeck.  The  portraits  of 
various  monarchs  who  had  a  part  in  that  history  hung 
in  its  banquet  hall,  and  Peter  the  Great,  himself,  who 
pounded  old  Russia  together,  looked  down  from  his 
gilded  frame  a  year  later  when  Poles  and  Bolsheviks 
met  here  to  make  peace. 

The  Black  Head  Club  was  a  company  of  merchants 
banded  together  in  the  fifteenth  century  to  defend  their 
town,  and  later  mellowed  into  a  mere  social  club  with 
various  quaint  traditions.  There  is  another  Black 
Head  House  in  Reval,  also  very  old,  and  now  turned 


RAILROAD  STATION  AT  HELSINGFORS  \_Chapter  7] 


THE    "SCHWARZ-HAUPTERPLATZ"    IN   THE   "OLD   TOWN"   AT   RlGA 


LATVIA  AND  THE  LETTS  161 

over  to  Esthonian  uses,  and  I  presume  still  others 
in  other  Hansa  towns.  Mauritius  was  their  patron 
saint,  and  the  kinky-haired  Moor's  head — the 
schwartzhaupt — is  found  on  all  their  houses  and 
carved  on  their  pews  in  church.  Royal  and  other 
guests  visited  the  Riga  house  and  wrote  their  names 
in  its  big  golden  book  and  sometimes  contrived  to  leave 
behind  a  glove  or  veil,  or  some  other  personal  token. 
The  last  official  Russian  visit  was  in  1910,  when  the 
unhappy  Nicholas,  then  Tsar  of  all  the  Russias,  King 
of  Poland,  Grand  Duke  of  Finland,  etc.,  etc.,  came  to 
Riga  to  celebrate  the  2OOth  annexation  of  the  Province 
of  Livland  to  Russia. 

We  had  another  glimpse  of  the  non-political  side  of 
Latvia  in  a  visit  to  the  Riga  Art  Museum.  The 
museum  was  closed  and  cold  as  ice,  but  I  had  scarcely 
mentioned  an  interest  when  my  guide  had  hunted  up 
the  Director,  the  distinguished  painter,  Purwits,  and 
not  only  had  the  museum  opened,  but  Mr.  Purwits 
and  his  assistant-director  there  to  receive  me.  The 
young  futurist  painter  came  along,  too,  because  he  had 
some  of  his  own  things  hung  there.  With  the  unhappy 
notion  of  correcting  his  impression  that  the  modern 
schools  were  unknown  in  America,  I  told  the  lieutenant 
to  tell  his  friend  that  we  had  a  great  deal  of  work 
like  his  in  America.  The  young  painter  answered  in 
Lettish  that  if  I  said  there  were  pictures  like  his  in 
America,  that  proved  I  didn't  understand  them  I 

Purwits  was  known  in  Russia,  where  he  had  worked 
with  the  great  Russian  landscape  painter,  Levitan, 
and  before  the  war  he  would  have  been  reckoned,  I 
suppose,  as  Russian.  It  was  interesting,  therefore,  to 


162         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

find  him  apparently  as  convinced  a  nationalist  as  the 
younger  men.  He  chatted  of  his  experiences  with 
Russians  and  said  that  they  were  quite  another  people 
from  the  Letts,  and  the  longer  one  knew  them  the  more 
one  felt  these  differences.  Most  of  his  Russian  friends 
had  had  little  interest  in  Western  culture.  "The  light 
comes  from  the  East!"  was  their  way  of  putting  it,  he 
said. 

There  were  several  of  Purwits'  pictures  in  the 
museum — white  birch  forests,  generally,  seen  across 
water  against  a  sombre  autumn  background  of  brown 
and  black  and  green — landscapes  easily  understand- 
able, yet  full  of  a  melancholy  Russian  beauty.  The 
young  futurist  could  only  shrug  his  shoulders  gloomily. 
Too  nai've  for  him !  he  said.  .  .  . 

THE  TRAGEDY  OF  RIGA 

Riga,  before  the  war,  was  one  of  Russia's  principal 
seaports  and  a  rapidly  growing  city  of  more  than  half 
a  million  people.  Beyond  the  "Old  Town"  on  the 
Duna  shore,  with  its  crooked  streets  and  ancient 
Lutheran  spires,  had  spread  a  new  city,  based  on 
manufacturing  and  trade  with  the  Russian  interior, 
with  theatres  and  parks,  broad,  shaded  boulevards 
and  suburban  villas,  and  all  the  furnishings  of  a  mod- 
ern West-European  city.  German  was  heard  as  often 
as  Russian  or  Lettish  on  its  streets,  there  were  a  good 
many  English  and  other  foreign  colonists — it  was  a 
live  and  cosmopolitan  place. 

Out  of  the  port  of  Riga  before  the  war  went  an- 
nually something  like  $120,000,000  worth  of  goods,  a 
good  part  of  it  grain  and  other  produce  from  the  in- 


LATVIA  AND  THE  LETTS  163 

terior  of  Russia.  From  Riga  and  the  other  Latvian 
ports,  Libau  and  Windau,  went  some  $210,000,000 
worth  of  merchandise.  About  half  as  much  came  in, 
bound  mostly  for  the  Russian  hinterland.  There  were 
about  400  factories  (the  figures  are  Lettish) 
grouped  about  Riga  and  some  90,000  workmen. 

With  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1914  the  port  of  Riga 
was  closed,  and  all  this  huge  trade  with  Russia  stopped 
short.  At  the  height  of  the  German  offensive  in  1915 
(when  the  great  Brest-Litovsk  and  Ivangorod  for- 
tresses were  blown  up  almost  without  having  fired  a 
shot)  the  Grand  Duke  Nicholas  gave  order  that  Riga 
should  be  evacuated.  It  was  an  order  that  would 
have  come,  probably,  only  from  a  Russian,  thinking  in 
terms  of  the  Napoleonic  invasion  and  the  passive  means 
which  defeated  it — an  example  of  that  curious,  inverted 
genius  for  self-destruction  which  poured  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  Lettish,  Lithuanian  and  Polish 
peasants  over  into  Russia,  to  be  scattered,  dying  of 
starvation  and  disease,  across  Siberia,  and  into  Turk- 
estan. Factories  with  their  machinery  and  workmen, 
banks  with  their  securities,  were  emptied  out  of  Riga 
in  a  few  hours.  The  population  dropped  from  517,- 
522  of  1914,  to  210,590  in  1916;  the  population  of 
Courland,  in  which  Riga  is  situated,  from  798,300  to 
269,812.  After  the  Russians  came  the  Germans;  then 
Bolshevists;  then,  in  the  autumn  of  1919,  Bermondt, 
and  the  fighting  back  and  forth  across  the  Duna  river. 

Few  neighborhoods  outside  the  zone  of  actual  trench 
warfare  have  suffered  more  from  the  war,  and  yet, 
coming  into  the  town  in  the  summer  of  1920,  for 
instance,  one  found  the  surfaces  almost  unchanged. 


164         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

Trolley-cars  bowled  cheerfully  down  the  wide  streets; 
the  park  and  Serpentine  winding  through  the  center 
of  the  town  were  well  kept,  grass  closely  mowed  and 
flower-beds  blooming;  and  the  trim  nurse-maids  and 
their  children,  old  gentlemen  pausing  to  exchange  a 
leisurely  good-morning,  the  snatches  of  talk  one  caught 
from  gentle-appearing  ladies  meeting  as  they  crossed 
the  Park  from  morning  marketing,  combined,  with  the 
beguiling  summer  sun,  to  create  an  air  of  well-ordered 
social  life  and  settled  urbanity. 

But  this  impression  was  soon  succeeded  by  another 
one — a  curious  sensation  of  having  got  up  too  early, 
or  having  arrived  on  some  unexpected  holiday.  The 
business  streets  were  almost  like  streets  on  a  Sunday; 
banks  all  but  empty;  wharves  deserted.  An  excursion 
down  the  river  to  Baldera  (where  the  British  and 
French  destroyers  had  anchored  the  year  before  dur- 
ing the  Bermondt  attack)  or  in  the  other  direction 
to  the  Strand,  was  a  melancholy  progress  past  dis- 
mantled factories;  some  smashed,  some  standing  in- 
tact with  smokeless  chimneys, — mile  after  mile  of 
bleaching  industrial  skeletons. 

The  big  Provodnik  Rubber  works,  known  all  over 
Russia  before  the  war,  stood  like  a  gigantic  dried-up 
honey-comb,  its  modern  reinforced  concrete  shell 
scraped  so  clean  that  there  was  not  so  much  as  a 
window-frame  left.  In  short,  Riga  was  a  city  starving 
commercially,  attacked  by  a  sort  of  pernicious  indus- 
trial anemia.  And  its  pleasant  surface  only  made  more 
haunting  the  impression  it  left — like  that  of  a  hand- 
some human  being  afflicted  by  some  obscure  and  sup- 
posedly incurable  disease.  .  .  . 


LATVIA  AND  THE  LETTS  165 

The  disease  was,  of  course,  not  at  all  incurable. 
Riga's  position  as  one  of  Russia's  main  gateways 
makes  its  ultimate  recovery  inevitable.  Some  of  its 
industries,  which  owed  their  success  to  a  high  pro- 
tective tariff  and  Russia's  comparative  lack  of  manu- 
factures, may  not  be  resumed,  especially  if  Latvia  con- 
tinues as  an  independent  state.  But  the  land  is  there, 
and  considerable  quantities  of  timber,  and  the  con- 
tinuance of  the  carrying  trade  is  only  a  matter  of 
time  and  peace  and  more  normal  conditions  in  Russia. 
In  another  five  years  Riga  may  be  booming,  and  looked 
at  in  terms  of  history  one  might  almost  say  that  there 
was  nothing  the  matter  at  all.  Unhappily,  it  is  not 
in  terms  of  history  that  everyday  people  live — those 
who  need  the  rubbers  the  Provodnik  no  longer  is  mak- 
ing, and  the  flour  that  used  to  come  out  of  Russia,  who 
must  contrive  to  live  with  a  rouble  that  is  worth  one 
or  two,  instead  of  fifty  cents. 

The  "psychology"  which  such  commercial  illness 
might  tend  to  encourage  in  some  of  the  less  tough- 
minded  inhabitants  was  suggested  by  a  little  adventure 
I  had  one  summer  afternoon  in  one  of  Riga's  suburbs. 
It  was  a  still,  hot  day,  and  I  had  taken  a  trolley-car 
out  to  the  end  of  the  line  and  then  continued  on  foot 
in  search  of  a  place  to  swim.  Tramping  along  in  the 
neighborhood  of  the  Kaiserwald,  a  villa  neighborhood 
near  a  lake,  I  hailed  a  passerby  and  asked  him  how 
one  got  to  the  water.  He  eyed  me  with  some  curiosity, 
asked  if  I  were  a  foreigner,  and  on  hearing  the  word 
"American"  at  once  insisted  that  I  should  return  with 
him  to  his  own  house  on  the  lake. 


166        NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

He  was,  it  appeared,  an  untitled  Bait  who  had 
visited  America  in  1893  at  the  time  of  the  Chicago 
World's  Fair.  The  Fair,  a  clubhouse  at  Bath  Beach, 
New  York,  where  he  had  spent  many  happy  days,  the 
enormous  tomatoes  we  were  able  to  grow  in  America 
had  made  an  indelible  impression.  It  had  been  his 
grand  tour,  that  trip  to  America,  and  it  was  thrown 
into  peculiar  allurement  now  by  the  black  cloud  of 
war  in  which  he  had  been  wrapped  for  six  years,  the 
collapse  of  the  old  Bait  order  in  Latvia,  and  the  ruin 
of  his  beautiful  Riga.  I  must  take  one  of  his  rowboats, 
for  the  lake  was  shallow  inshore,  and  afterward  come 
back  to  the  house  and  have  a  bottle  of  his  home-brewed 
beer. 

So  I  took  the  boat  and  had  a  swim  in  the  middle  of 
the  lake,  the  shores  of  which  were  dotted  with  the 
"pink  seals"  found  throughout  these  Baltic  waters,  all 
splashing  about,  as  refreshingly  free  of  bathing  suits  as 
so  many  South  Sea  Islanders,  and  rejoined  my  hospi- 
table host.  He  showed  me  his  garden  and  ice-boats,  the 
two  cottages  he  had  hoped  to  rent — but  what  good 
would  it  do  to  rent  them  now  and  be  paid  in  paper 
money? — all  the  while  interspersing  his  cheerful  and 
matter-of-fact  comments  on  life  in  general  and  summer 
colonies  in  particular,  with  a  sort  of  recurrent  lament 
on  the  downfall  of  Riga.  It  had  been  a  fine  city,  but 
where  were  their  intelligentsia?  Who  were  these 
Letts,  anyway,  and  what  did  they  know  about  running 
a  country?  They  didn't  want  to  work,  were  always 
jealous  of  each  other — a  queer  lot,  who  had  been 
ground  down  too  long. 

Seated  on  a  little  balcony  at  last,  looking  out  on 


LATVIA  AND  THE  LETTS  167 

the  lake  over  the  top  of  one  of  those  enormous  glasses, 
six  inches  across  the  top  and  nearly  as  deep,  which  the 
Germans  use  for  particularly  foamy  beer,  I  remarked 
that  Riga  would  be  herself  again  as  soon  as  Russia 
opened  up. 

"Russia  will  never  open  up!"  declared  my  com- 
panion, "Russia  is  finished.  Only  foreigners  can  ever 
do  anything  with  Russia.  The  Russians  will  never  be 
able  to  do  it  for  themselves.  Everything  has  an  end. 
Persia  went  at  last,  so  did  Rome.  So  will  England  go, 
finally,  and  America.  This  disease  that's  in  Russia 
will  go  round  the  world.  It's  the  end  of  everything." 
He  turned  with  an  air  of  explanation — "It's  all  in  my 
program!" 

Going  into  the  house  he  returned  with  a  huge, 
leather-bound  Bible,  printed  in  old  German  type  with 
an  introduction  by  Martin  Luther.  Turning  to  one 
of  its  chapters  he  said,  "They  took  this  out  of  the  later 
editions  because  they  said  it  had  too  many  fairy  tales. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  there's  more  truth  in  this  book 
than  in  any  of  them!"  He  began  to  read  cryptic 
phrases  about  a  time  of  destruction  coming,  when  a 
great  wind  should  blow  from  the  East  .  .  .  "You 
see — that's  Russia!"  It  would  blow  in  the  morning, 
and  through  the  noon — "Noon  .  .  .  that's  Central 
Europe !"  Kings  would  rise  against  each  other,  and 
no  man's  property  be  respected — in  short,  there  it  all 
was,  just  as  things  were  happening  today.  "No!"  he 
concluded,  oracularly,  "Russia  must  burn!  Russland 
.  .  .  muss  .  .  .  brennenf" 

He  took  the  Bible  back  and  brought  out  a  faded 
photograph  of  the  Bath  Beach  clubhouse.  "That's 


168         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

it  I"  he  said.  "It  was  twenty-seven  years  ago.  I  was 
a  young  man  then  I"  ...  We  finished  our  beer,  and 
he  walked  back  through  the  pines  with  me  and  pointed 
out  a  short  cut  to  the  trolley-line. 

TRADE  AND  THE  NEW  ORDER 

While  the  cutting  off  of  trade  with  Russia  and  the 
evacuation  of  its  factories  made  Riga's  lot  particularly 
hard,  the  difficulties  caused  by  a  depreciated  paper 
currency,  and  the  problem  of  paying  for  indispensable 
imports  were  similar  to  those  faced  by  all  these  border 
states.  The  efforts  of  the  Lettish  Government  to  climb 
out  of  this  slough  of  commercial  depression  were  also 
similar  to  those  made  elsewhere  and  what  is  said  here 
of  Latvia  may  be  taken,  therefore,  to  apply  more  or 
less  accurately  to  other  states  as  well. 

A  casual  tourist  arriving  in  the  Baltic  in  the  year 
after  the  war,  and  seeing  amber  necklaces  traded  for 
a  few  hundred  cigarettes;  officers  from  Foreign  Mis- 
sions disposing  of  second-hand  shirts  and  boots  before 
they  left  for  home  for  almost  as  much  as  they  paid 
for  them ;  and  delicate  ladies  receiving  from  their  gal- 
lant admirers  abroad,  not  candy  and  books,  but  tooth- 
paste and  soap,  might  easily  have  conceived  a  sure 
and  certain  plan  of  making  a  fortune.  Simply  go 
home,  load  up  a  ship  with  all  sorts  of  things,  from 
shoes  and  silk  stockings  to  chocolates  and  cotton  cloth, 
and  sail  round  the  Baltic  coast  as  New  England  skip- 
pers used  to  sail  out  to  the  East,  and  trade  with  the 
natives  I 

The  only  objection  to  this  scheme  was  that  while  the 
natives  needed  everything,  they  had  little  or  nothing 


LATVIA  AND  THE  LETTS  169 

with  which  to  pay  for  it.  There  was,  however,  a  little 
flax,  and  here  and  there  a  surplus  of  potatoes,  and 
nearly  everywhere  quantities  of  uncut  timber.  Hun- 
dreds of  houses  were  smashed  in  France.  Why  not 
take  the  timber  to  France  and  bring  back  some  of  the 
things  needed  here? 

This  was  an  idea  which  occurred,  in  one  form  or 
another,  to  many,  and  there  were  various  projects  with 
timber  as  a  basis,  expanding  all  the  way  from  purely 
private  ventures  to  schemes  to  issue  currency  with  tim- 
ber concessions  as  a  basis.  Eventually,  no  doubt,  busi- 
nesses based  on  real  wealth,  like  that  in  forests,  will 
succeed,  but  they  met  at  first  with  all  sorts  of  unfore- 
seen difficulties,  and  among  these  difficulties  were  the 
measures  taken  by  the  very  governments  anxious  to 
encourage  trade  and  build  up  their  own  finances. 

In  both  Esthonia  and  Latvia,  for  instance,  there 
were  attempts  to  keep  up  the  rate  of  exchange  and 
pay  for  indispensable  imports  by  compelling  the  ex- 
porter to  exchange  his  foreign  currency  receipts  for 
local  paper  or  to  import  an  amount  of  goods  equiva- 
lent in  value  to  that  exported.  The  first  might  take 
the  form  of  a  requisition  of  25  per  cent  of  the  gross 
receipts  received  for  exported  goods,  in  return  for 
what  the  Government  deemed  an  equivalent  amount 
of  its  own  money;  or  the  Government  might  requisi- 
tion a  part  of  the  goods  later  imported,  for  sale  in 
government-controlled  cooperative  stores.  Under  the 
compulsory  importation  scheme,  your  timber  exporter 
who  sold  $1,000  worth  of  lumber  in  England  would  be 
expected,  for  instance,  to  bring  back  into  the  country 
$1,000  worth  of  cotton  cloth,  or  shoes,  or  soap,  or 


170         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

machinery.  Sometimes  he  must  even  state  beforehand 
at  what  price  in  local  currency  these  imported  goods 
would  be  sold. 

While  the  Government's  desire  to  keep  up  its  bal- 
ance of  trade  is  understandable,  these  schemes  were 
difficult  to  work  out  in  practice.  Exporting  is  one 
business,  and  importing  quite  another,  and  the  man 
who  knew  all  about  Esthonian  timber  might  know  little 
about  buying  advantageously  in  a  foreign  market. 
Moreover  he  could  not  reckon  on  a  comparatively 
fixed  and  easily  convertible  medium  of  exchange.  Even 
were  the  paper  which  he  was  eventually  destined  to 
accept  for  his  English  pounds  wanted  abroad,  its  ac- 
tual value,  before  the  transaction  was  completed,  might 
be  cut  in  two.  And  the  rate  at  which  the  Government 
compelled  him  to  exchange  his  foreign  money  was  al- 
most always  below  the  rate  at  which  that  money  sold 
in  the  open  local  market. 

Or  again,  the  Government  declared  a  monopoly  and 
went  into  business  itself,  on  the  theory  that  in  time  of 
great  need  the  Government  ought  to  have  some  control 
over  the  available  resources  and  utilize  them  for  the 
good  of  the  greatest  number.  But  government  mo- 
nopolies, even  in  highly  'organized  communities  in 
normal  times,  are  not  always  efficient;  and  here  noth- 
ing was  normal  and  the  amateur  financiers  had  little 
experience.  They  bought  hides,  for  instance,  at  a  high 
price,  and  promptly  hides  dropped  50  per  cent  in  Bel- 
gium where  it  was  hoped  to  sell  them.  The  Government 
wanted  to  make  money,  naturally,  and  as  the  peasant 
knew  this  he  would  not  unnaturally  wish  to  sell  his  flax 
to  somebody  else,  who  might  give  him,  instead  of  the 


LATVIA  AND  THE  LETTS  171 

Government,  the  higher  price.  In  Lithuania,  for  in- 
stance, where  flax  was  a  government  monopoly,  the 
smuggling  of  flax  across  the  border  into  the  occupied 
district  about  Memel  became  a  more  or  less  regular 
thing.  As  the  French  were  occupying  Memel  and 
some  of  the  flax  found  its  way  to  France,  the  Lithua- 
nians, who  regarded  Memel  as  rightfully  theirs,  ac- 
cused the  French  of  smuggling.  The  accusation  may 
not  have  been  just,  but  the  flax  slipped  over,  neverthe- 
less. 

The  Lettish  Government  decreed  that  the  new  Lett- 
ish rouble  should  exchange  at  the  rate  of  one  Lettish 
rouble  for  two  Tsar  or  "gold"  roubles.  As  this  was 
more  than  the  Lettish  rouble  was  worth  in  the  open 
market,  the  result  was  that  all  prices  jumped  accord- 
ingly. Either  the  consumer  lost,  or,  if  the  Govern- 
ment stepped  in  again  and  fixed  prices,  the  merchant 
might  have  to  close  up  his  business.  A  poor  Lithua- 
nian had  2,000  Tsar  roubles  on  deposit  in  a  Riga  bank. 
He  sent  word  that  the  money,  which,  before  the  war, 
would  have  been  worth  $1,000  should  be  paid  to  a 
member  of  his  family  in  Latvia.  The  Government 
had  also  decreed  that  payments  from  banks  should  be 
made  only  in  Lettish  roubles.  The  man's  relatives 
were  therefore  paid  1,000  Lettish  roubles — worth 
about  $15.  instead  of  $1,000.  The  loss  on  Tsar 
roubles  was  something  that  struck  everybody  whose 
funds  were  in  Russian  money,  but  in  this  case  the  bit 
of  salvage  was  cut  in  two.  Decrees  of  this  sort — 
compulsory  rates  of  exchange  below  the  market  rate, 
the  forced  acceptance  of  local  paper  money — made 
business  men  uneasy  and  decreased  confidence  in  banks. 


172         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

If  people  got  any  "real"  money,  they  were  inclined  to 
put  it  in  a  stocking. 

In  addition  to  such  embarrassments,  there  were,  as 
might  be  expected  in  such  disorganized  communities, 
with  officials  ill  paid,  without  traditions  of  responsi- 
bility, and  tasting  power  for  the  first  time,  a  good  many 
extra-legal  demands.  Stories  of  private  speculation 
accompanying  government  business  were  Constantly 
heard,  and  the  necessity  of  tipping  on  a  more  or  less 
extensive  scale  seemed  to  be  taken  for  granted  by 
most  foreign  business  men.  Here  is  an  ianecd/ote 
characteristic  of  the  sort  of  gossip  in  the  air: 

A  man  whose  factory  had  been  sequestered,  wanted 
to  sell  the  machinery  to  the  Government.  The  Min- 
ister whom  he  approached  was  agreeable,  but  sug- 
gested that  it  might  be  pleasanter  to  make  the  nominal 
price  30,000  instead  of  25,000  so  that  there  might  be 
something  left  over  for  accidental  contingencies.  The 
factory  owner  agreed,  but  before  the  deal  could  be  put 
through  several  of  the  Minister's  subordinates  inti- 
mated that  they  also  were  interested  and  that  it  might 
be  still  better  to  make  the  nominal  price  35,000  and  so 
take  care  of  them  as  well.  The  would-be  vendor  might 
have  agreed  to  this,  for  the  ethical  aspect  of  the 
transaction  did  not  appear  to  weigh  heavily  on  him, 
but  suddenly  bethought  himself  that  he  might  be 
brought  up  for  profiteering  later  on  if  the  nominal 
price  became  known,  and  so  was  reluctantly  forced  to 
call  the  whole  affair  off! 

The  Rigasche  Rundschau  spoke  editorially  one  day 
to  the  length  of  two  columns  on  the  "unproductivity 
and  dishonesty  of  our  public  officials." 


LATVIA  AND  THE  LETTS  173 

"It  cannot  be  disputed,"  it  said,  "that  the  war  has 
lowered  the  standards,  not  only  of  our  public  officials, 
but  of  other  circles  as  well.  War  and  revolution  have 
seriously  shaken  ideas  of  private  property.  The  State 
requisitions,  sequesters,  and  expropriates  in  a  manner 
often  little  in  accord  with  old-time  principles  of  justice. 
What  wonder  that  our  lesser  officials,  who  already  be- 
gin to  look  on  themselves  as  little  parts  of  the  State,  do 
as  they  see  the  State  doing — i.  e.,  take  what  may  be 
taken? 

"The  officials  against  whom  there  are  nowadays  so 
many  complaints  are  not  something  dropped  from 
heaven.  They  are  simply  part  of  the  people,  and  every 
people  has  the  officials  it  deserves.  We  know  that  the 
Prussian  State  grew  great,  thanks  to  its  unusually  hon- 
est public  servants  (it  is  not  necessary  to  construe  from 
this  any  criminal  sympathy  for  Prussians)  and  that 
Russia  went  to  pieces  largely  through  its  rotten  bu- 
reaucracy. This  is  a  matter,  not  of  subordinary  but 
of  the  greatest  public  importance,  and  one  that  should 
be  attended  to  without  further  delay." 

The  Rundschau,  as  an  organ  of  the  Baits,  was,  in  a 
sense,  an  organ  of  the  opposition,  yet  its  general  atti- 
tude toward  Latvian  independence  was  patriotic,  it 
had  long  been  one  of  the  most  substantial  papers  of 
the  Baltic  neighborhood,  and  the  criticism  expressed 
here  would  have  been  shared  by  many  Letts  as  well. 
This  aspect  of  independence  is  less  pleasant  to  dwell 
on  than  home-rule,  broader  democracy,  and  the  pictur- 
esque careers  of  men  like  Ulmannis,  for  instance,  who 
seem  to  personify  the  hopeful  romance  of  such  young 
"peasant"  states.  The  hope  and  romance  are  there, 
but  human  beings  continue  to  be  human  even  under 
majority  rule — and  none  the  less  so  when  they  get  a 
chance  to  get  even  with  those  who  have  long  oppressed 


174        NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

them — and  this  side  of  the  picture  is  something  which, 
in  nearly  all  these  struggling  new  states,  it  would  be  a 
doubtful  friendship  to  overlook. 

PEASANTS  AND  THE  LAND 

The  story  of  the  land  in  Latvia  is  similar  to  that  in 
Esthonia.  Substituting  Letts  for  Esthonians,  it  is  in 
its  essentials  the  same.  But  there  were,  of  course, 
local  differences  in  custom,  history  and  scene;  differ- 
ences in  the  events  preceeding  the  passage  of  the  land 
law,  in  the  autumn  of  1920 — a  year  after  the  Estho- 
nians had  passed  theirs — and  minor  differences  in  the 
law  itself. 

When  the  Revolution  of  1905  blazed  up  through 
Russia's  border  states,  it  burned  itself  out  compara- 
tively harmlessly  in  the  Lettish  towns  in  meetings  and 
talk,  but  in  the  country  there  were  peasant  uprisings, 
burning  of  manor  houses  and  occasional  killing.  The 
Lettish  small-farmers  who  had  grown  up  since  the 
Baits  began  to  sell  land  from  their  "peasant  estates"  in 
1863,  took  no  part  in  these  disorders,  and  after  the 
reaction  set  in,  they  joined  the  bourgeoisie  on  the  side 
of  law  and  order.  These  small  farmers — wirte  in 
German,  saimneeki  in  Lettish — were  sometimes  called 
"gray  barons"  by  the  radical  Socialists  and  disliked  al- 
most as  much  as  the  Bait  barons  themselves.  Socially, 
President  Ulmannis  might,  I  suppose,  be  included  with 
the  wirte  class.  While  the  small  independent  farmers 
were  developing  in  the  country,  a  Lettish  middle  class 
was  growing  up  in  the  towns,  and  in  industrial  Riga 
what  might  be  called  a  Lettish  proletariat.  Many 
of  these  workers,  as  well  as  some  of  the  peasants,  were 


LATVIA  AND  THE  LETTS  175 

thrown  over  into  Russia  when  Riga  was  evacuated  in 
1915.  They  were  later  enlisted  in  the  Soviet  Army 
and  became  perhaps  the  toughest  and  most  trustworthy 
fighters  for  the  Bolsheviks. 

The  bringing  in  of  German  colonists — mostly  from 
the  German  settlements  in  southern  Russia — had  in. 
terested  some  of  the  Baits  before  the  war,  and  in 
1914  it  was  estimated  that  some  13,000  of  these  Ger- 
mans had  been  settled  in  Courland,  the  southern  prov- 
ince of  Latvia,  and  about  7,000  in  Livonia.  The  vague 
promises  of  land  to  the  dissatisfied  soldiers  of  the 
"Iron  Division" — already  mentioned — was  a  last 
flickering  of  this  attempt,  and  when  Bermondt  and  the 
German  troops  were  disposed  of,  the  Letts  set  about 
to  put  their  agrarian  problem  in  order. 

The  old  manor  house  life  had  already  been  ploughed 
from  end  to  end  by  war,  Bolshevism  and  government 
seizures.  The  estates  were  swept  of  horses,  cattle 
•and  machinery,  and  there  was  scarce  a  manor  house 
in  which  you  would  not  find  furniture  and  carpets  gone, 
libraries  burned,  and  family  portraits  gouged  and 
slashed.  After  the  Needra  coup  d'etat  in  1919  most 
of  the  estates  in  north  Livonia  had  been  sequestered  by 
the  Government  and  the  owners  declared  traitors. 
There  was  the  usual  amount  of  mixed  guilt  and  justice. 
Some  of  these  "traitors"  were  fighting  against  the 
Bolsheviks  as  bravely  as  any  Lett.  Some  whose  estates 
were  taken  over  on  the  ground  that  they  were  not  be- 
ing worked,  were  out  of  the  country  and  unable  to  get 
back,  or  had  lost  all  their  means  of  keeping  up  work. 
The  wholesale  seizures  discouraged  owners  whose  land 
was  not  yet  touched  and  cut  down  production.  After 


176         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

the  Bermondt  adventure  had  been  smashed  there  was 
similar  action  in  Courland. 

In  answer  to  a  questionnaire  addressed  by  the  Gov- 
ernment to  the  landless  and  to  peasant  proprietors  who 
needed  more  land,  there  were  some  43,000  responses, 
the  large  majority  of  which  expressed  a  preference 
for  actual  proprietorship  to  renting  land  of  the  State. 
About  two-thirds  of  the  applicants  already  had  a  horse 
and  cow  and  a  bit  of  money,  and  felt  that  with  small 
farms  they  would  be  self-supporting.  A  good  many 
had  been  employed  as  gardeners,  millers,  and  forest- 
ers on  the  large  estates,  and  had  had  the  use  of  their 
little  parcel  of  land  from  the  owner.  The  43,000  re- 
quests represented  a  total  of  172,474  people,  counting 
women  and  children,  and  of  these,  120,889  were  de- 
scribed as  being  able  to  work. 

While  the  agrarian  law  was  being  discussed  in  the 
Assembly,  I  ran  across  a  collection  of  Lettish  folk- 
songs, of  which  the  Letts,  like  the  Esthonians,  have 
quantities.  I  asked  one  of  the  Foreign  Office  secre- 
taries who  was  interested  in  such  things  to  pick  out 
some  of  the  more  interesting  ones,  and  afterward,  at 
her  home,  she  played  and  sang  several  of  them.  Some 
were  merely  quaint  and  playful,  like  all  such  ballads, 
and  told  about  horses  and  geese  and  true  love,  but 
others  brought  back  echoes  of  serf  days  and  the  long- 
smouldering  hatred  of  an  oppressed  class. 

Of  the  first  sort  was  "Puht,  vehjini  (Blow,  little 
wind)"  of  which  the  Lettish  poet,  Rainis,  made  a  play, 
and  in  which  a  young  man  asks  the  little  wind  to  blow 


LATVIA  AND  THE  LETTS  177 

him  to  Courland  to  get  him  a  wife.  There  was  an- 
other in  which  girls  sang  about  a  lamb  that  wanted 
fine  clover  and  an  old  man  who  wanted  a  young  wife. 
The  lamb  got  the  clover,  but  the  old  man  didn't  get 
the  girl.  What  should  they,  the  girls  asked,  want  of 
old  men?  Better  tie  us  up  and  sink  us  in  the  river! 
There  were  several  variations  on  this  plan  for  a  song, 
in  which  cows  calling  for  clover  and  horses  neighing 
for  oats  were  contrasted  with  young  men  and  maidens 
calling  for  each  other,  and  sometimes  one  side  got 
what  it  wanted  and  sometimes  the  other. 

In  another  song,  a  young  peasant  "worked  five  years 
and  earned  five  pelts."  He  went  after  a  bride  but  dogs 
fell  on  him  and  tore  the  skins  to  pieces.  When  he 
asked  the  girl's  mother  for  her  daughter,  she  said  No, 
indeed;  her  daughter  was  white  and  fine,  and  all  he 
had  was  a  torn  pelt.  Then  there  was  an  endless  one, 
a  sort  of  jig,  telling  what  a  young  peasant  got  for 
every  year's  service.  He  served  the  master  a  year  and 
got  a  hen — "piku,  piku"  .  .  .  served  another  year 
and  got  a  rooster — "piku,  piku,  rooste  .  .  .  served 
a  third  year  and  got  a  duck  or  turkey  .  .  .  "piku, 
piku,  rooste,  woorkigu,  rigun" — and  so  on. 

There  were  mournful  songs  like  the  one  beginning 
"Kastee  tahdi,  kas  dseedaja" — "What  is  that  mournful 
song  in  the  dark  ?  Those  are  the  servants  of  the  hard 
masters.  They  are  weeping  and  making  fires  in  the 
fields  to  keep  warm.  .  .  .  Go  away  quickly,  O  Sun, 
and  give  us  a  free  evening.  Hard  masters  give  us 
work,  but  they  will  gjive  us  no  rest."  Here;  are 
snatches  of  others  in  a  similar  key: 


178         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

"Hurry  home,  little  horse,  with  your  bridle  of 
birch  bark.  Bitter  years  and  hard  masters  give  us 
no  chain  bridle.  ..." 

"Three  maidens  swam  the  Duna  but  one  did  not 
get  across.  Was  she  filled  with  lead,  or  silver 
money?  No,  with  sorrow  for  the  lad  who  was  sent 
away  to  war.  What  is  all  the  noise  in  Riga?  They 
are  making  a  wreath  for  the  girl  who  was 
drowned.  ..." 

"The  little  mother  (not  a  real  mother  but  a  sort 
of  woman  superintendent  on  the  estate)  would  let 
her  daughters  sleep,  but  the  work  will  not  ..." 

"When  the  fence-post  blooms,  when  the  stone 
floats,  when  the  feather  sinks — then  shall  I  come 
back  (from  war)  .  .  ." 

More  bitter  is  the  one  about  the  "black  snake  which 
grinds  flour  on  a  rock  in  the  sea.  The  master  who 
gives  us  no  rest  will  have  to  eat  that  flour."  In  an- 
other the  Bait  is  asked  where  his  own  land  is,  and  his 
horses  and  cows,  and  why  does  he  come  into  their  land 
to  live  by  their  work?  In  still  another  the  peasant 
says  that  he  would  like  to  buy  Riga  with  all  its  Ger- 
man people.  He  would  make  the  Germans  jump  and 
dance  on  a  red-hot  stove  and  the  higher  they  jumped 
the  hotter  he  would  make  the  fire.  Mr.  Ralph  Butler 
in  a  chapter  on  Latvia  quotes  one  in  which  the  peasant 

• 

tells  his  German  guest  that  there  is  no  room  for  him 
in  the  hut  for  it  is  full  of  smoke;  nor  in  the  yard, 
for  it  is  full  of  wind  and  rain;  and  advises  him  to  go 
to  the  bottom-most  place  in  Hell  where  the  devil  makes 
his  fire, — "no  rain,  there,  German,  no  smoke  there  I" 


LATVIA  AND  THE  LETTS  179 

The  taking  over  of  estates  before  the  land  law  was 
passed  and  the  methods  of  local  administration  were 
characterized  by  the  same  sort  of  vagueness  as  in 
Esthonia,  but  it  appeared,  according  to  figures  given 
out  by  the  Land  Ministry  that,  shortly  before  the  law 
passed,  about  200  manorial  estates  and  nearly  1,000 
branch  estates  and  smaller  farms  were  in  the  hands  of 
the  State.  Between  15,000  and  16,000  tenants  were 
leasing  farms  from  the  Government  on  the  sequestered 
private  lands — more  than  half  of  whom  expected  to 
become  owners  of  the  land  they  were  renting — and 
there  were  said  to  be  nearly  9,000  new  tenants  on  the 
former  Crown  and  Russian  Peasant  Bank  lands.  The 
general  plan  of  parcelling  was  similar  to  that  in 
Esthonia — farms  of  20  dessiatins  (about  55  acres) 
which  a  man  and  his  family,  with  two  horses,  could 
cultivate  without  hired  help. 

When  the  discussion  started  in  the  Assembly,  the 
Social  Democrats  demanded  confiscation  of  the  large 
estates  without  compensation.  The  Agrarian  Com- 
mission, which  was  dominated  by  the  Social  Demo- 
crats, recommended  such  a  law  and  it  had  been  de- 
manded by  the  party  as  the  price  for  their  participation 
in  the  Ministry.  The  middle-ground  parties  declined 
to  pay  this  price  and  the  Social  Democrats  took  no 
part  in  the  Cabinet,  in  consequence.  They  had  57  of 
the  150  seats  in  the  Assembly — the  poet  Rainis  and 
his  wife  were  among  them — but  the  Farmers'  Union — 
the  party  of  Premier  Ulmannis — and  the  other  mid- 
dle-ground groups,  had  55  seats;  and  with  the  help  of 
the  other  third,  some  eleven  small  minority  groups, 


180        NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

including  the  conservative  Baits,  they  were  able  some- 
what to  hold  the  extremists  in  check.  Ulmannis  him- 
self favored  compensation  and  the  right  of  the  owners 
to  retain  a  part  of  their  estates  for  their  own  use — say 
100  dessiatins  (about  270  acres). 

The  Baits  fought  desperately  for  their  existence, 
and  the  Rundschau  hoped  that  "our  representatives 
will  not  be  controlled  by  the  thought  of  'what  will 
Europe  say?'  but  will  themselves  be  good  enough 
Europeans  to  make  a  decision  which  will  not  only  pro- 
tect the  interests  of  the  State,  but  will  also  not  lower 
the  good  reputation  of  our  people  in  the  eyes  of  civil- 
ized Europe."  The  papers  of  the  Left  flamed  with 
the  reiteration  of  ancient  wrongs  and  exhorted  patri- 
otic Letts  to  finish  with  the  barons  for  good  and  all. 
"The  7OO-year  tyranny  is  broken  at  last,"  said  the 
Latwijas  Kareiwis,  "the  dragon  is  struck  through  the 
heart  and  lies  at  the  feet  of  the  Lettish  people,"  and 
the  picturesque  hope  was  expressed  that  his  carcass 
might  be  used  to  fertilize  the  new  Latvia. 

It  was  not  a  moment  for  calm  discussion.  In  the 
middle  of  the  argument  the  Soviet  Army  drove  to  the 
gates  of  Warsaw,  there  was  talk  of  Bolshevism  sweep- 
ing clear  across  Germany  to  the  Rhine,  and  fear 
enough  that  the  Bolsheviks  might  overthrow  the  Lett- 
ish Government  itself  to  lead  the  British  and  American 
representatives  to  cable  for  warships.  The  question 
was  not  so  much  what  the  Ulmannis  Government 
might  think  best,  as  what  they  could  succeed  in  mak- 
ing the  Left  accept. 

The  law  as  finally  passed  was  slightly  less  drastic 
than  that  in  Esthonia.  The  large-estate  owners  ap- 


LATVIA  AND  THE  LETTS  181 

parently  retained  the  right  to  about  125  acres  of  their 
original  property,  and  they  could  also  lease — but  not 
own — their  former  bei-giiter  or  small  sub-estates, 
when  these  made  "separate  complete  farming  units" 
of  less  than  about  247  acres.  The  peasants  to  whom 
the  parcelled  farms  were  given  could  either  lease  them 
from  the  Government  or  acquire  real  property  rights. 
The  amount  they  had  to  pay  for  such  property  was 
to  be  determined  by  later  legislation  and  be  based  on 
the  amount  of  compensation — also  to  be  fixed  later  on 
— given  the  original  owners.  Small  farms  purchased 
in  the  past  by  peasants  as  a  freehold — the  farms  of 
the  wirte — were  not  included  in  the  land  taken  over. 
The  new  farms  were  to  contain  not  more  than  55 
acres  of  arable  land,  and  not  over  about  123^  acres  of 
other  land,  of  which  not  more  than  about  Tl/2  acres 
should  be  in  forest.  On  land  suitable  for  gardening  and 
close  to  a  market  the  parcels  were  not  to  exceed  about 
25  acres.  Citizens  whose  main  occupation  was  not  farm- 
ing might  obtain,  within  the  discretion  of  the  Central 
Land  Committee,  plots  of  not  more  than  2^  acres 
near  towns  or  5  acres  in  the  country.  The  preference 
given  to  those  who  had  served  in  the  army  and  to  the 
relatives  of  soldiers  was  similar  to  that  in  Esthonia. 
It  was  while  the  discussion  of  these  proposals  was  at 
its  hottest  that  I  went  down  into  the  country  to  visit 
one  of  the  large  Livonian  estates. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

BALT  TWILIGHT 

MY  host's  younger  daughter  was  spending  the  week- 
end with  her  parents  and  she  met  me  on  the  station- 
platform  at  Riga  that  baking  afternoon,  lugging  a  big 
suitcase  and  an  armful  of  bundles.  She  was  nineteen, 
perhaps;  tall  and  slimly  strong,  bright-cheeked  and 
shy — a  regular  girl,  and  at  the  same  time,  although  not 
related  to  royalty,  a  regular  princess.  As  a  Bait,  her 
name  was  German;  the  title  for  over  a  century  had 
been  Russian;  and  her  friends,  travels,  and  general 
background  was  a  mingling  of  the  two.  Her  speech 
was  German,  Russian,  French,  English — it  made  little 
difference  which — and  she  also  talked  Lettish,  enough 
to  get  along. 

Before  the  war,  or  even  before  the  Bolshevik  revo- 
lution and  Latvia's  independence,  she  might  not  have 
carried  her  own  luggage  or  gone  to  work  as  a  trans- 
lator and  secretary,  and  certainly  a  guest  would  not 
have  started  for  the  country  in  a  cattle-car.  But 
motors  were  long  a  thing  of  the  past,  and  as  for  the 
estate,  who  could  tell  what  might  have  happened  to 
it,  even  today?  .  .  .  We  flung  our  things  into  one  of 
the  long  line  of  boxcars  and  scrambled  in  after  it.  The 
train,  not  due  to  leave  for  another  half  hour,  was 
already  packed.  People  sat  in  the  doorways — 

182 


BALT  TWILIGHT  183 

naturally  the  coolest  seats — with  their  legs  dangling 
outside.  In  one,  a  boy  was  strumming  a  balalaika. 
Inside  were  pine  benches  without  backs  and  air  like 
an  oven.  There  were  families  going  to  spend  Sun- 
day with  their  farmer  relatives,  unhappy  babies,  and 
market-women  returning  with  empty  baskets  and  damp 
gunny-sacks  full  of  crabs  or  fish.  We  squeezed  among 
this  uncomfortable  but  patient  crowd,  ate  wet  rasp- 
berries out  of  a  brown  paper  bag  and  finally  got  under 
way. 

An  hour  or  two  of  stewing  and  we  came  to  Mitau — 
headquarters  of  the  Bermondt  adventure  of  the  year 
before — and  here  waited  another  hour  and  changed  to 
third-class  cars.  Another  hour  or  two,  and  we  were 
deposited  at  a  siding  in  the  open  fields.  We  sat  in 
the  grass  beside  the  track  and  played  mumblety-peg, 
and  at  last,  toward  evening,  a  miniature,  wood-burning 
locomotive  appeared  from  the  nearby  pines  trailing  a 
string  of  little  flat-cars.  The  train  was  a  relic  of  the 
German  invasion,  when  Riga  was  being  surrounded 
in  1917,  and  the  Germans  had  used  this  narrow-gauge 
to  carry  ammunition  to  their  battery  positions.  It  had 
been  thriftily  taken  over  and  was  now  used  for  people 
instead  of  shells. 

There  was  nothing  to  sit  on,  and  as  soon  as  the  train 
got  under  way  the  smoke  and  live  cinders  poured  back 
on  our  heads.  The  peasant  women  lay  down,  covered 
their  heads  and  went  to  sleep.  We  dodged  from  side 
to  side  of  the  lurching  little  trucks  and  tried,  not  al- 
ways with  success,  to  brush  the  cinders  off  before  they 
burned  clear  through. 

The  late  sun  went  down  at  last,  the  moon  came  up, 


184         NEW  .MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

and  a  cool  night  smell  breathed  out  from  the  harvested 
fields.  It  may  have  been  eleven  o'clock  when  the 
Princess  broke  a  long  silence  by  pointing  toward  a 
black  stretch  of  forest. 

"That's  where  we  used  to  hunt,"  she  said.  "It  was 
full  of  deer." 

Another  hour  of  slow  trailing  through  pines  and 
sweet-smelling  stubble,  past  one  or  two  ruined  manor- 
houses,  and  then  we  climbed  down  and  started  along 
a  faintly  seen  path  across  the  fields.  The  Princess,  in- 
sisting on  carrying  her  share  of  the  luggage,  strode 
ahead  like  an  Indian.  Past  a  Dutch  windmill;  lonely, 
silent  houses  on  a  hill,  and  we  came,  after  half  an 
hour's  tramp,  to  a  little  river.  There  was  a  rattle  of 
chains,  a  sleeping  peasant  boatman  shook  himself 
awake,  and  we  were  ferried  across.  Up  the  bank,  past 
stone  barns  and  a  watchman  loitering  in  the  shadow  of 
the  gate,  then  a  driveway,  and  then — a  long,  high,  sil- 
vered mass  against  black  pines — the  manor-house 
itself. 

There  was  neither  light  nor  sound,  but  the  girl 
walked  round  the  house  and  pounded  on  a  closed 
wooden  shutter.  It  was  opened  presently  and  shut 
hastily. 

"It's  my  little  brother,"  she  laughed.  "He  thinks 
we're  burglars!"  and  continued  pounding.  The  big 
front  door  opened  finally  and  a  tall  figure  peered 
out.  "O  I"  he  cried,  and  welcomed  us  in.  It  was  the 
Prince  himself,  still  limping  from  the  wound  he  had 
received  the  autumn  before  on  the  Bolshevik  front, 
but  still  the  debonair  master  in  his  own  house.  There 
were  apologies  and  a  scurrying  for  candles,  and  pres- 


BALT  TWILIGHT  185 

ently  we  were  telling  the  last  Riga  news  over  bread 
and  milk  and  a  big  dish  of  wild  strawberries. 

They  were  quite  literally  camping  out  in  what  had 
once  been  a  sort  of  palace.  Since  1914  the  place  had 
been  ransacked  again  and  again.  Furniture  and  pic- 
tures were  gone  or  smashed;  parquetry  floors  ripped 
up  and  wall  covering  pried  away  in  the  search  of  hidden 
treasures;  marble  statutes  overturned  and  their  necks, 
noses  and  arms  broken;  there  was  not  a  horse  left  in 
the  stable,  except  one  or  two  second-rate  animals. 
One  of  our  bundles,  it  turned  out,  was  sheets  for  the 
guest's  bed.  I  had  brought  a  blanket  and  in  a  few 
minutes — it  was  after  one  by  this  time — was  dozing 
under  it  on  a  saggy  mattress  which  had  supported  sol- 
diers with  their  boots  on — Russians,  Germans,  Bolshe- 
viks, Bermondt's  men,  and  goodness  knows  what  other 
strangers  for  the  night. 

We  gathered  for  a  late  breakfast  after  taking  our 
various  dips  in  the  river — more  wild  strawberries,  and 
their  own  honey — and  then  spread  blankets  on  the 
grass,  and  proceeded,  as  people  do  in  the  short  Baltic 
summer,  to  soak  up  all  we  could  of  the  sun.  It  was  a 
delicious  Sunday  morning,  so  still  and  peaceful  that  one 
could  not  but  remark  on  it.  Princess  X.  more  out- 
spoken than  her  husband,  shrugged  her  shoulders  a 
little  bitterly. 

"On  the  surface,  perhaps.  Really,  we  are  living 
over  a  volcano."  .  .  . 

On  the  surface,  indeed,  the  old  order  still  held. 
The  peasants  had  raised  a  little  arch  of  branches  and 
flowers  in  front  of  the  house  in  honor  of  the  Prince's 
homecoming,  and  decorated  some  of  the  rooms.  The 


186         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALI  1C 

canny  old  Jew  who  rented  a  bit  of  land  across  the 
river  and  played  the  traditional  role  of  money-lender, 
store-keeper,  and  general  middle-man  so  common  in 
East  European  countrysides — every  estate-owner  "has 
his  Jew,"  they  say  in  Poland — had  sent  a  big  cheese- 
cake. A  pastry-cook,  driven  from  Riga  by  the  war 
that  made  cafe-keeping  impossible,  and  now  trying  to 
make  a  farmer  of  himself,  on  another  corner  of  the 
estate,  had  sent  a  splendid  example  of  his  ancient 
handiwork — an  elaborately  frosted  cake  with  whipped 
cream  filling  that  would  have  cost  a  fortune  in  the 
city. 

Everything  was  quiet  about  the  place,  the  Prince 
said,  the  harvest  work  had  gone  on  as  well  as  could  be 
expected  with  the  lack  of  hands  and  of  horses,  the 
peasants  were  not  complaining.  But  he  felt  that  they 
were  patient  because  they  expected  that  they  were 
going  to  get  the  land.  If  the  agrarian  law  were  not 
satisfactory  no  one  could  tell  what  might  happen.  He 
spoke — as  all  these  Bait  estate-owners  now  speak  since 
the  people  have  begun  to  realize  their  strength — of 
the  desirability  of  a  wider  distribution  of  the  land,  and 
his  own  willingness  to  sell,  or  even  give  away,  a  third 
of  his  property. 

"It  should  be  done  slowly,  though,  and  given  to 
those  who  understand  farming  and  have  the  capi- 
tal to  make  a  success  of  it.  The  Russian  Government, 
with  its  land-purchasing  program,  had  started  many 
thousands  of  small  farms  in  the  years  just  before  the 
war.  The  old  Russian  Government  was  not  perfect 
but  it  was  not  nearly  so  bad  as  people  think  in  the 
West.  It  was  getting  ahead,  and  in  another  genera- 


BALT  TWILIGHT  187 

tion,  if  the  war  hadn't  come,  it  would  have  come  close 
to  solving  the  whole  land  problem." 

We  started  presently  for  a  walk,  the  Prince  limping 
alongside  and  in  his  rapid,  slightly-lisping  English, 
describing  the  estate  and  the  manner  of  working  it. 
One  of  several  places  belonging  to  him,  it  contained 
about  18,000  acres  and  in  peace  times  had  been  run  as 
a  practical  farm  and  a  model  dairy.  There  was  the 
great  house  itself,  a  tawny,  stucco-covered  structure, 
in  that  "institutional"  style  so  common  in  Russia;  the 
park  adjoining  it;  extensive  stables,  hothouses,  and 
dairy  outbuildings,  and  beyond  that  fields  and  forest. 
The  general  look  of  the  country — rolling  plain  broken 
by  woodland  and  the  lazy  little  river  winding  through 
—was  much  like  our  own  Middle  West. 

We  looked  into  the  empty  stables,  only  the  names 
of  the  pedigreed  horses  left  over  the  stalls;  the  long 
cow-barns;  electric  light  plant,  all  smashed  now,  and 
despite  the  ruin  of  a  business  into  which  the  surplus 
of  many  years  had  gone  in  improvements,  the  Prince 
rattled  off  technical  facts  and  figures  with  the  en- 
thusiasm of  one  who  had  all  his  life  lived  on  the  land 
and  loved  it. 

"Yes,"  he  said,  "it  was  a  fine  place.  A  good  life. 
Lots  of  work  going  on.  Lots  of  people  coming  all 
the  time.  Travellers  from  abroad  used  to  visit  us.  It 
was  not  so  much  out  of  the  world  as  you  might 
think.  .  .  .  Now  my  oldest  boy  doesn't  know  a  thing 
about  a  farm.  He's  insulted  if  you  ask  him  if  the 
cows  have  come  in  yet.  How  should  he  know  about 
such  things?  Such  knowledge  is  beneath  him.  But 
I'm  a  countryman.  I  like  the  country.  We  used  to 


188         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

spend  all  our  time  here  except  for  an  occasional  trip 
in  the  winter." 

We  passed  a  row  of  peasant  cottages,  good-looking 
brick  buildings,  more  like  dormitories  or  barracks 
than  those  I  had  seen  in  Esthonia.  Families  were 
loafing  about  the  front  steps  and  the  men  took  off 
their  hats.  As  we  crossed  the  garden,  an  old  peasant 
darted  forward,  ducked,  and  quickly  kissed  the  Prince's 
hand. 

"That  seems  odd  to  an  American,  I  suppose.  .  .  . 
Well" — he  smiled  apologetically.  "It's  a  custom 
here."  He  told  of  his  arrangements  with  the  workers 
on  the  estate. 

There  were  land  knechts  and  half-korners,  as  well 
as  the  deputat-knechts  found  on  the  Esthoman  estate 
already  described.  The  first,  the  lowest  type  of  labor- 
ers, gave  the  proprietor  half  their  time — both  husband 
and  wife  working — in  return  for  the  use  of  a  small  plot 
of  land.  The  half-kdrners  gave  half  their  crop  as 
rent.  The  arrangement  with  deputat  laborers  was 
similar  to  that  in  Esthonia.  They  were  paid  mostly  in 
kind,  and  about  60  roubles  a  year.  Altogether  their 
wages,  supplies  included,  came  before  the  war,  to 
about  a  rouble  (fifty  cents)  a  day.  The  deputat  peas- 
ant had  a  house  supplied  by  the  owner,  a  meadow  for 
his  cows,  a  bit  of  land  for  flax  and  potatoes.  It  was 
possible  for  him,  with  the  help  of  family,  to  accumulate 
a  certain  surplus  and  become  a  renter  himself. 

"Those  are  the  people  to  whom  land  should  be 
given,"  said  the  Prince.  "They  are  capable  and  ambi- 
tious and  would  know  what  to  do  with  it." 

The  peasants  were  housed  in  large  brick  dwellings, 


BALT  TWILIGHT  189 

accommodating  about  a  dozen  families,  or  in  small 
two-family  houses.  Teaching  for  the  peasant  children 
had  been  attended  to  by  an  individual  who  also  helped 
the  sexton  and  played  the  organ  in  church.  A  single 
man — one  could  fancy  a  mild-mannered,  threadbare 
creature,  coming,  as  it  were,  from  some  eighteenth 
century  novel — could  live  on  the  salary.  A  married 
man  could  not.  The  hours  of  work  in  summer  were 
twelve  hours  at  least. 

"We  have  only  four  months  of  spring  and  summer. 
It  is  light  for  practically  the  whole  twenty-four  hours 
during  June  and  July;  things  grow  fast  while  they  do 
grow,  and  we  must  make  the  most  of  it.  They  work 
from  four  in  the  morning  until  seven  and  then  stop 
an  hour  for  breakfast.  Then  from  eight  until  noon, 
and  again  from  one  until  five.  Then  there  is  another 
short  spell  in  the  evening. 

"In  the  winters,  on  the  other  hand,  we  have  in  this 
latitude  only  about  five  hours  of  daylight  and  there  is 
not  much  to  do  out  of  doors.  But  there  are  all  sorts 
of  odd  jobs  indoors — repairs,  threshing,  weaving  and 
spinning."  I  asked  about  amusements,  thinking  about 
our  own  prairie-country  Fords,  and  the  movies  and 
Orpheum  in  the  nearby  town.  Apparently  there  were 
not  many  amusements  except  when  they  got  together 
to  dance  or  sing. 

We  returned  and  tramped  through  the  house,  still 
littered  with  straw,  smashed  furniture,  statues  and 
pictures.  The  Prince  kept  muttering:  "Here  we  had 
carpets.  .  .  .  There  were  always  flowers  there.  .  .  . 
This  wall  was  covered  with  leather.  Fancy  trying  to 
cover  walls  with  leather,  nowadays!"  and  he  would 


190 

give  that  high,  slightly-mocking  giggle  with  which  his 
amiable  talk  was  often  punctuated.  "The  only  books 
we  have  left  are  these  old  encyclopedias.  There  used 
to  be  some  rather  nice  books.  There  was  one  with 
annotations  by  Erasmus.  The  Bolsheviks  threw  them 
all  into  the  river.  They  said  that  I  might  read  them 
when  they  floated  down  to  Mitau — I  was  in  Mitau 
then."  And  again  he  laughed. 

After  lunch  we  all  went  out  on  the  grass  again,  the 
Prince  and  his  wife  and  daughter  and  two  small  boys. 
And  as  we  loafed  there  in  the  sun  an  elderly  peasant 
approached,  kissed  his  master's  and  mistress's  hand, 
and  then,  quite  at  his  ease,  started  in  on  one  of  those 
interminable  peasant  visits.  It  was  characteristic  of 
that  personal  friendliness  and  "democracy"  which,  in 
Russia  and  along  the  western  edge  of  it,  within  class 
lines  much  more  rigidly  drawn  than  ours,  existed  in 
a  sense  rarely  found  in  corresponding  circumstances 
at  home.  In  a  curious  half-oratorical  sing-song  the  old 
fellow  rambled  on  about  the  weather,  crops,  the  ex« 
travagence  of  the  local  government.  After  half  an 
hour  of  it  I  strolled  away  for  a  walk  and  when  I  came 
back  the  visit  was  still  going  on.  If  the  Prince  and 
Princess  were  bored  they  gave  no  sign.  They  asked 
and  answered  questions,  listened  and  nodded  as  seri- 
ously as  if  they  were  gossiping  with  one  of  their  oldest 
friends.  Except  that  the  peasant  stood  and  they  lay 
on  the  ground  there  was  nothing  to  suggest  any  differ- 
ence between  them.  The  interview  must  have  lasted 
for  an  hour  and  a  half. 

In  the  lazy  warmth  we  strolled  down  to  the  river, 
rowed  across  and  started  up  the  hill  toward  the  family 


BALT  TWILIGHT  191 

burial  ground  and  the  little  ruined  church.  Half  way 
up,  in  a  sunny  clearing,  stood  a  baby  carriage.  The 
Prince  and  Princess  exchanged  glances.  It  was  a  car- 
riage that  had  been  used  for  their  own  children  and 
must  have  been  taken  from  one  of  the  upper  rooms  of 
their  house.  They  walked  over  toward  it,  looked  in — 
there  were  strange  baby  clothes  there — and  saying 
nothing,  continued  on  up  the  hill. 

At  the  top,  two  peasant  women  were  sitting,  between 
them  on  the  ground,  with  eyes  as  blue  as  the  sky  into 
which  they  peacefully  gazed,  a  baby  girl.  This  was 
evidently  the  baby  of  the  carriage.  The  Princess 
talked  to  them  in  Lettish  and  asked  about  the  child.  It 
had  belonged  to  a  couple  who  had  run  away  in  the 
Bolshevik  time  and  left  the  child  without  a  word. 
And  where  were  they  now?  The  women  shrugged 
their  shoulders  patiently.  Who  could  tell?  Who 
knows  in  this  broken  eastern  Europe,  where  to-morrow, 
anybody  may  be?  The  baby  girl,  healthy  as  a  young 
trout,  slowly  waved  her  arms,  aware  finally  that  some- 
body else  had  come.  Hers  the  gift  of  youth,  at  any 
rate,  and  she  would  see  a  generation  more  than  the 
rest  of  us  of  this  changing  world. 

It  was  beautiful  there  on  the  hill.  Below  us,  drows- 
ing in  the  lazy  afternoon,  lay  fields  and  river,  the 
tawny  length  of  the  manor  house,  the  distant  pine 
woods  of  what  had  once  been  a  little  principality  all 
but  sufficient  unto  itself.  A  little  way  upstream  peas- 
ant girls  were  swimming.  They  laughed  and  splashed 
and  chased  each  other  over  the  grass,  all  that  was  peas- 
ant about  them  left  with  the  clothes  out  of  which  their 
strong  round  bodies  had  hurried — white  nymphs  in  an 


192 

ancient  paradise.  Just  beneath  us  a  mother  was  try- 
ing to  teach  her  little  dolls  of  girls  to  swim.  Their 
notion  was  to  lean  over  with  tremendous  deliberation 
and  just  touch  the  tips  of  their  noses  to  the  water  and 
snatch  their  faces  back  again.  The  mother  gently 
poked  them  with  a  stick.  There  was  not  a  sound  but 
the  laughter  of  the  peasant  girls. 

We  went  on  into  the  churchyard.  The  church  itself 
had  been  burned,  the  walks  and  tombs,  uncared  for  for 
six  years,  were  overgrown  with  weeds  and  grass.  The 
Prince  pointed  out  the  tomb  of  one  ancestor  who  had 
been  an  Ambassador  to  England.  Another,  his  great 
grandmother,  I  think,  had  been,  a  century  and  a  half 
ago,  instructress  to  the  Tsarina's  children.  For  that 
service — and  one  could  fancy  what  Social  Democratic 
land-reformers  would  think  about  this! — this  great 
estate  had  apparently  been  given  as  one  would  give 
a  ring  or  a  cigarette-case. 

There  was  a  tomb  to  officers  who  had  fought  against 
the  Russians  in  the  Napoleonic  wars.  The  Germans, 
coming  into  the  neighborhood  in  the  Great  War,  at 
a  time  when  Germany  hoped  to  make  these  Russian 
provinces  hers,  had  &een  this  tomb  and  its  German 
names  and  placed  an  inscription  of  their  own  above. 

"Es  griissen  sich"  it  began,  "We  salute  you  An- 
cestors— children  who  are  worthy  of  you!" 

As  we  read  the  inscription  the  daughter  spoke :  "We 
used  to  wonder  how  war  could  ever  have  been  here. 
It  was  so  quiet  and  so  far  from  the  world.  And  that 
war  should  come  here  again  .  .  .  here.  .  .  ." 

We  walked  back  down  the  hill,  making  a  slight  de- 
tour to  thank  the  Jew  for  his  cheese-cake.  He  was 


BALT  TWILIGHT  193 

harnessing  a  team  behind  his  barn — a  bright-eyed, 
bearded,  sly-looking  old  fellow,  who  began  at  once,  as 
if  it  were  something  expected  of  him,  to  gossip  know- 
ingly of  prices  and  clever  trades.  No  worries  in  his 
head,  evidently.  Whatever  happened  to  this  world  in 
which  he  had  turned  a  penny  here  and  a  penny  there, 
without  precisely  being  a  part  of  it,  he  would  land  on 
his  feet. 

We  said  our  good-byes  and  turned  in  early  that 
night,  for  I  was  to  catch,  on  its  return  journey,  the 
same  narrow-gauge  train  on  which  we  had  come  the 
night  before.  It  was  about  two  o'clock  when  the 
watchman  knocked  on  the  shutters  and  a  few  minutes 
later  I  had  crossed  the  river  and  was  tramping  alone 
through  the  moonlit  fields.  From  the  hill  where  the 
path  turned  toward  the  station  one  could  see  the  house 
on  the  lowland  half  veiled  in  white  mist.  .  .  . 

...  I  had  gone  north  to  Reval  and  Finland,  before 
the  land  law  was  passed.  It  was  several  weeks  later, 
and  the  winter  rains  had  begun,  when  I  heard  that  the 
estate  had  been  taken  at  last  and  that  the  Prince  had 
gone  to  Switzerland. 


CHAPTER  IX 
THE  CASE  OF  LITHUANIA 

THERE  is  a  rough  analogy  between  Lithuania  and 
the  other  Baltic  republics — here  again  a  peasant  peo- 
ple are  determined  to  free  themselves  from  Russia 
and  from  a  local,  non-Russian  aristocracy.  But  as  one 
proceeds  southward  from  Finland,  national  outlines 
become  less  sharp  and  the  whole  problem  of  inde- 
pendence more  complicated. 

Finland,  grown-up  politically,  detaches  itself  easily 
from  its  Russian  moorings  to  sail  away  with  its 
Scandinavian  sisters  as  an  independent  state.  Esthonia 
and  Latvia,  while  less  developed,  are  nevertheless 
fairly  compact.  With  their  old  Hansa  ports,  and  the 
Germanic  culture,  material  and  intellectual,  which  the 
new  masters  inherit  from  the  Baits,  they  start  with 
the  individuality  which  has  always  set  the  "Balticum" 
apart. 

When,  however,  the  traveller  leaves  the  high-gabled 
houses  and  Lutheran  spires  of  Riga  and  Reval,  and 
journeys  southward  into  Catholic  Lithuania,  he  finds 
himself  entering  a  very  different  world.  The  cosy, 
neighborhood  feeling  of  the  provinces  looking  out  on 
the  northern  sea  is  gone.  One  is  getting  down  into 
Europe  now;  into  a  vaguer  and  vaster  region,  and  that 

all  but  inextricable  jumble  of  race,  religion  and  politi- 

194 


THE  CASE  OF  LITHUANIA  195 

cal  sovereignity  found  in  the  region  once  ruled  by 
Poland,  and  after  the  Partitions,  by  Russia. 

The  Lithuanians  are  more  numerous  than  either 
the  Esthonians  or  Letts,  and  the  territory  they  inhabit 
is  larger.  Their  intelligentsia,  if  one  were  to  include 
in  it  all  the  educated  Lithuanians  scattered  over  the 
world — nearly  a  million  Lithuanians,  for  instance,  are 
said  to  be  living  in  the  United  States  and  Canada — 
might  be  larger  too,  but  geographical  position  and 
historical  experience  have  not  tended  in  the  same  way 
to  set  their  nationality  apart. 

Except  for  a  bit  of  coastland  about  the  former  Ger- 
man port  of  Memel,  which  the  Lithuanians  now  hope 
to  make  their  own,  they  are  shut  off  from  the  sea — 
a  socially  undeveloped,  agricultural  country,  crowded 
in  between  Russia  and  Germany.  If  one  except  Vilna, 
the  ancient  Lithuanian  capital,  but  now  half  Jewish, 
and,  culturally,  more  Polish  than  Lithuanian,  they  have 
nothing  that  could  properly  be  called  a  city.  Kovno, 
used  as  a  capital  most  of  the  time  since  they  declared 
their  independence,  is  but  a  shabby,  one-story  town, 
as  much  Jewish  as  Lithuanian,  and  regarded  by  the 
Russians  before  the  war  as  a  mere  sort  of  garrison- 
place  for  its  surrounding  forts. 

An  ancient  people,  with  a  proud  medieval  history 
which  naturally  loses  nothing  in  the  accounts  of  pres- 
ent-day nationalists,  the  Lithuanians  were  so  long 
merged  with  the  Poles,  that  until  very  recent  years, 
Lithuania,  as  a  separate  political  entity,  was  scarcely 
thought  of.  If  not  Russian,  it  was  Polish,  in  the  minds 
of  most  outsiders,  and  to  the  Poles,  of  course,  it  is  so 


196         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

still.  The  Poles  roughly  take  the  place  in  the  Lithua- 
nian picture  of  the  Baits  in  Esthonia  and  Latvia,  but 
with  this  significant  difference.  Whereas  the  Baits 
are  a  mere  handful  of  titled  landlords,  cut  off  by  the 
defeat  of  Germany  from  even  the  moral  support  of 
powerful  outsiders,  the  Poles  in  Lithuania  are  the 
outposts  of  a  potentially  powerful  state  which  regards 
the  Lithuanians  as  a  rebellious  minority  of  what  it 
hopes  will  become  a  greater  Poland.  The  Lithuanians, 
in  short,  have  been  swallowed  twice.  And  the  escape 
of  both  Lithuanians  and  Poles  from  the  belly  of  the 
Russian  whale  does  not  in  the  least  deter  the  Poles 
from  doing  a  little  swallowing  on  their  own  account, 
or,  as  they  might  put  it,  from  keeping  what  they  swal- 
lowed long  ago. 

The  Lithuanians  are  not  Slavs,  but  of  the  same 
Indo-European  stock  as  the  Letts,  and  their  language, 
which  is  similar  to  Lettish,  is  one  of  the  oldest  in 
Europe.  Enthusiastic  Lithuanian  philologists  have 
picked  out  phrases  which  are  almost  identical  with 
Latin  and  Greek;  the  language  is  said  to  be  espe- 
cially rich  in  caressing  diminutives,  and  it  is  frequently 
said  that  Lithuanian  is  more  like  ancient  Sanskrit  than 
any  other  European  tongue.  It  is  not  Slavic,  at  any 
rate,  although  the  Russian  Government  endeavoured 
to  make  it  so,  and  while  many  abstract  and  technical 
terms  have  been  borrowed,  just  as  they  have  in  mod^- 
ern  Finnish  and  Ukranian,  it  must  be  reckoned  as  a 
separate  and  serious  speech. 

When  the  Teutonic  Knights  were  conquering  and  con- 
verting what  is  now  Esthonia  and  Latvia,  the  Lithua- 
nians were  tough-fisted  pagans,  worshipping  the  ele- 


THE  CASE  OF  LITHUANIA  197 

mentg  and  a  variety  of  gods  in  their  sacred  groves 
and  keeping  outsiders  at  a  safe  distance.  Their  north- 
ern tribes  succumbed  before  the  invaders,  but  those 
further  south,  protected  somewhat  by  their  marshes, 
held  out,  and  at  one  time  their  princes  ruled  loosely 
over  a  wide  territory  extending  almost  from  the  Baltic 
to  the  Black  Sea. 

In  1386,  Jagiello,  Grand  Duke  of  Lithuania,  mar- 
ried Hedwig,  Queen  of  Poland,  accepted  the  Catholic 
faith  and  was  crowned  King  of  Poland.  Jagiello 
brought  a  rugged  barbarian  vigor  to  this  alliance, 
while  the  gentle  Hedwig — she  was  young  and  in  love 
with  a  youthful  prince — might  be  said  to  have  con- 
tributed the  graces.  In  the  generations  which  fol- 
lowed, something  like  these  relative  positions  con- 
tinued. The  well-born,  socially-aspiring  Lithuanians 
tended  to  become  Polish,  and  as  there  was  almost  no 
middle  class  in  this  fighting  feudal  state,  the  rank  and 
file  of  the  Lithuanians  dropped  to  the  position  of  serfs 
and  peasants. 

At  the  second  diet  of  Lublin,  in  1569,  King  Sigis- 
mund  of  Poland  tightened  what  had  hitherto  been  a 
sort  of  offensive  and  defensive  family  alliance  into  a 
more  definite  political  union.  The  Treaty  of  Lublin 
was  not  entered  into  with  entire  willingness — the 
chronicles  relate  that  the  Lithuanian  delegates  knelt 
before  Sigismund  in  protest  and  begged  him  to  remem- 
ber their  merits  and  not  to  expose  them  to  humiliations 
— and  Lithuania  preserved  a  certain  autonomy.  But 
she  lost  some  of  her  richest  provinces,  and  politically 
began  to  disappear  in  Poland. 

The  Lithuania  which  made  this  union  with  Poland 


198         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

included  a  considerable  portion  of  the  White  Russians, 
a  branch  of  the  Great  Russian  family,  who  to-day  are 
found  in  the  Vilna  neighborhood,  in  the  Russian  "gov- 
ernments" of  Moghilev,  Smolensk,  and  Minsk,  and,  in 
general,  in  the  lands  about  the  headwaters  of  the 
Dnieper  river  (which  runs  southward  through  the 
Ukraine  to  the  Black  Sea)  and  the  Dvina,  which  runs 
northwestward  through  Latvia  into  the  Baltic.  The 
poet,  Miczkiewicz,  who  wrote  in  Polish,  and  Kosciuz- 
sko,  himself,  came  from  the  White  Russian  part  of 
Lithuania  and  they  are  claimed  therefore  by  the  Poles, 
the  Lithuanians  and  the  White  Russians.  Prince  Sapi- 
eha,  the  Polish  Foreign  Minister,  is  White  Russian  in 
his  remoter  ancestry. 

The  word  "white"  has  no  color  significance,  but  is 
said  to  have  been  a  term  applied  to  those  who  did  not 
have  to  pay  tribute  to  the  Tartars.  The  White  Rus- 
sians now  also  want  independence,  and  they  have  or- 
ganized themselves  to  a  certain  extent,  but  their  na- 
tionalism is  rather  too  sketchy  to  be  considered  here 
further  than  as  illustration  of  the  complications  and 
nuances  of  the  Lithuanian  question.  Most  of  the 
White  Russians  are  Russian  Orthodox  in  religion,  but 
some  are  Uniates  (those  in  communion  with  Rome  but 
retaining  the  Greek  rite)  and  some  Roman  Catholics. 
And  as  peasants  along  the  Russian  border  not  infre- 
quently confuse  religion  and  nationality  and  say  they 
are  "Orthodox"  when  asked  their  race,  and  answer 
"Polak"  when  they  mean  "Catholic,"  the  problem  of 
disentangling  nationalities  in  such  a  region  as  that 
about  Vilna  may  be  imagined. 


THE  CASE  OF  LITHUANIA  199 

When  Poland  was  partitioned,  the  Lithuanians  be- 
came Russian  subjects,  except  for  a  fringe  in  the  Me- 
mel  and  Tilsit  neighborhood  who  went  to  Prussia. 
By  this  time  the  Lithuanian  nobility  regarded  itself 
as  Polish;  the  serfs  had  little  or  no  interest  in 
national  politics;  the  nationally-conscious  Lithuanian 
intelligentsia  was  still  a  thing  of  the  future,  and  Lithu- 
ania, except  as  name  applied  to  a  Russian  "govern- 
ment," had  practically  ceased  to  exist. 

Lithuanians  were  lumped  in  with  Poles  in  the  gen- 
eral policy  of  Russification.  In  1864  the  Russian 
Government,  having  crushed  the  insurrection  started 
by  the  Polish  nobles,  prohibited  the  use  in  Lithuania 
of  Latin  script.  Lithuanian  was  assumed  to  be  a 
Slavic  language  and  if  it  wasn't,  the  Russians  were 
going  to  make  it  so.  For  fifty  years,  until  the  revo- 
lution of  1905,  this  prohibition  was  enforced.  When 
the  prohibition  went  into  effect,  Lithuanian  as  a  writ- 
ten language,  kept  alive  in  the  clerical  seminaries,  was 
just  beginning  to  revive.  The  freeing  of  the  serfs 
and  emigration  encouraged  the  growth  of  a  nation- 
ally-conscious Lithuanian  intelligentsia — it  was  the 
natural  moment  for  a  literary  revival.  The  result 
was  that  a  flood  of  smuggled  books,  pamphlets  and 
papers  began  to  pour  across  the  border — from  the 
Lithuanian  printing  presses  in  Tilsit  and  Memel,  and 
later  from  other  countries,  especially  America.  The 
Prussian  Lithuanians  were  naturally  not  much  hin- 
dered by  the  German  authorities  in  this  patriotic  anti- 
Russian  work.  Indeed,  there  was  instruction  in  Lithu- 
anian in  the  secondary  schools  in  Memel  and  Tilsit, 


200 

and  a  chair  in  Lithuanian  in  the  University  of  Konigs- 
berg.  The  magazine  Ausra  (The  Dawn),  started  in 
1883  by  Dr.  Basanavicius  and  published  in  Tilsit,  did 
so  much  to  fire  the  younger  generation,  that  to  have 
been  one  of  its  editors  is  a  sort  of  Lithuanian  equiva- 
lent of  having  signed  the  Declaration  or  come  over 
in  the  Mayflower. 

With  the  revolution  of  1905,  a  National  Assembly, 
which  the  Lithuanian  clergy  did  much  to  keep  in 
bounds,  met  in  Vilna  and  asked  for  radical  educational 
reforms  and  autonomy  within  Russia.  The  Petrograd 
Government  was  frightened  into  granting  permission 
for  the  use  of  Latin  script  and  for  a  modified  use  of 
Lithuanian  in  the  schools,  and  it  began,  too  late,  a 
policy  of  playing  off  the  Lithuanian  nationalists 
against  the  Poles. 

When  the  war  broke  out  the  Lithuanians  were  mob- 
ilized along  with  the  rest  of  Russia's  heterogenous 
millions.  It  can  not  be  said  that  they  had  any  heart 
in  the  fight,  or  that  the  common  soldier  had  any  no- 
tion of  what  it  was  all  about.  The  intelligentsia,  fired 
with  the  idea  of  independence  since  1905,  and  not 
caring  greatly  whether  it  came  from  the  East  or  the 
West,  began  to  look  hopefully  toward  Germany  after 
the  Germans  had  occupied  Lithuania  and  suggested 
their  interest  in  protecting  the  aspirations  of  small 
nations.  Meanwhile  there  were  nationalistic  con- 
gresses at  Lausanne,  the  Hague,  Berne,  Chicago,  and 
nationalistic  speeches  in  the  Russian  Duma,  and  in 
December,  1917,  a  Lithuanian  National  Council,  or 
Tariba,  proclaimed  Lithuania's  independence  and  asked 
the  protection  of  the  German  Empire.  In  March, 


THE  CASE  OF  LITHUANIA  201 

1918,  Germany  recognized  Lithuania's  independence, 
but  before  the  proposed  federation  between  the  two 
countries  could  be  definitely  arranged,  the  Lithuanians 
became  alarmed  at  Pan-German  talk  of  out-and-out 
annexation,  and  hastily  offered  the  crown  to  Prince 
Urach  of  Wurtemberg.     It  had  been  discovered  that 
he  was  a  descendent  of  the  ancient  Lithuanian  dynasty 
of  Mindaugas,  and  the  intention  was  that  he  should 
bear  the  title  of  Mindaugas  II. 

This  project  blew  away  with  Germany's  defeat,  like 
the  somewhat  similar  project  in  Finland.  The  second 
of  Lithuania's  overpowering  neighbors  was  removed 
for  the  time  being,  however,  although  Poland  still  re- 
mained and  the  Lithuanians  started  in  to  paddle  their 
own  canoe.  A  new  Tariba  was  elected  in  January, 

1919,  a  cabinet  chosen  to  act  as  temporary  executive, 
and  in  April,  Dr.  A.  Smetona,  President  of  the  Tariba, 
was  made  Chief  of  State,  or  President.     The  cabinet 
was  succeeded  by  another  in  August,   Dr.   Smetona 
retaining  his  office,  a  law  passed  providing  for  elec- 
tions to  the  Constituent  Assembly,  and  in  the  late  au- 
tumn of  1919  this  government  received  de  facto  recog- 
nition from  Great  Britain  and  France. 

The  two  pressing  problems  here,  as  in  Esthonia  and 
Latvia,  were  keeping  out  the  Bolsheviks  and  doing 
something  to  divide  up  the  large  estates.  The  Lithu- 
anians organized  an  army,  with  the  aid  of  German 
money  and  arms,  and  later  with  assistance  from  Eng- 
land, and  with  some  backing  from  the  German  troops 
left  in  the  country  after  the  Armistice,  and  the  active 
cooperation  of  the  Poles,  succeeded  in  keeping  the 


202        NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

Bolsheviks  at  bay.  Vilna,  their  theoretical  capital,  on 
the  eastern  edge  of  their  territory,  changed  hands 
several  timea.  The  Bolsheviks  took  it  in  January 
1919,  and  a  few  months  later  were  driven  out  by  the 
Poles  under  Pilsudski.  They  took  it  again  in  1920  dur- 
ing their  drive  on  Warsaw,  and  when  they  made  peace 
with  the  Lithuanians,  retired  and  turned  it  over  to 
them.  The  Lithuanians  had  scarcely  moved  in  and 
set  about  making  it  their  permanent  capital,  when 
the  Polish  General  Zeligowski,  acting  apparently  with 
the  knowledge,  although  without  the  official  sanction 
of  the  Warsaw  government,  drove  them  out  again,  and 
although  requested  to  get  out  by  a  committee  of  the 
League  of  Nations,  declined  to  budge. 

Central  and  western  Lithuania  were  comparatively 
normal,  meanwhile;  farming  in  the  rich  lands  along 
the  Niemen  was  going  on  almost  as  usual,  and  the 
new  government  was  gradually  putting  its  house  in 
order.  The  elections  to  the  Constituent  Assembly 
were  held  in  April,  1920,  and  Dr.  Smetona  resigned 
and  turned  over  his  powers  to  the  Constituent  itself. 
A  new  Cabinet,  on  which  several  of  the  old  Cabinet 
served,  was  chosen,  with  Alexander  Stulginskas  as 
President  of  the  Assembly  and  Dr.  Kazimir  Grenius 
as  Prime  Minister.  It  was  decided  that  the  Supreme 
Power  should  rest  in  the  one-chamber  Assembly,  that 
the  President  of  the  Assembly  should  also  act  as  Presi- 
dent of  the  Republic,  and  that  the  Ministry,  chosen 
by  the  Assembly,  should  be  responsible  to  it.  A  Con- 
stitution embodying  these  provisions,  and  an  agrarian 
law,  somewhat  less  radical  than  those  in  Esthonia  and 
Latvia,  were  gradually  elaborated  during  1920  and 


THE  CASE  OF  LITHUANIA  203 

it  was  expected  that  the  elections  to  the  first  regular 
Parliament  would  take  place  in  the  autumn  of  1921. 
Lithuania  had  meanwhile  received  de  jure  recognition 
from  Esthonia,  Latvia,  Germany,  Soviet  Russia,  Ar- 
gentina and  Spain,  while  Italy  had  given  what  the 
Lithuanians  regarded  as  its  equivalent  by  sending  a 
consular  representative.  De  facto  recognition  had 
been  given  by  Britain,  France,  Sweden,  Finland,  Den- 
mark, Switzerland  and  Poland. 

AMERICA  AND  THE  POST-PIONEERS 

The  two  things  that  struck  me  at  once  on  coming  to 
Kovno  from  Riga  in  the  summer  of  1920  were  the 
amount  of  food  and  the  number  of  Americans.  Kovno, 
like  Ivangorod  and  Brestlitovsk,  was  a  fortress  town 
in  the  old  Russian  days,  and  the  Russian  Government 
did  not  encourage  it  to  be  anything  else.  It  is  a  shabby, 
smelly  old  place,  the  best  the  Lithuanians  could  do  for 
a  capital  until  they  could  get  into  Vilna,  but  the  travel- 
ler from  the  north  promptly  forgot  this  in  the  startling 
sight  of  shop  windows  full  of  white  bread  and  curly 
Vienna  rolls,  tarts  and  meringues  of  all  sorts,  and  even 
heaps  of  real  chocolate  creams. 

Preoccupation  with  such  things  may  seem  frivolous 
to  those  who  know  no  more  of  the  effects  of  war  than 
we  did  at  home,  but  it  is  quite  understood  in  eastern 
Europe.  The  pastry  was  not  only  in  the  windows,  but 
in  several  little  cafes  along  the  main  street  (the  ones 
which  bore  the  Polish  label  cukernia,  were  looked  at 
very  much  askance  by  the  Lithuanians)  officers  and 
young  ladies  were  devouring  it  and  sipping  coffee  with 
half  an  inch  of  real  sugar  in  the  bottom  of  the  glass 


204         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

in  quite  the  good  old  Russian  style.  One  talked  of 
little  else  for  the  first  few  hours,  and  couriers  carried 
the  tidings  northward  all  the  way  to  Finland. 

The  Lithuanian  soil  is  richer  than  that  of  most 
of  Esthonia  and  Latvia,  and  in  spite  of  everything  the 
little  country  was  still  comparatively  fat.  It  was 
exporting  timber,  eggs  and  flax;  the  parcelling  of 
the  estates  had  not  yet  been  radical  enough  to  cut  down 
production  much;  there  were  herds  of  cattle  in  the 
meadows,  although  how  they  had  been  saved  from 
requisition  was  a  secret  known  only  to  the  peasants 
and  the  Lithuanian  swamps  and  forests;  there  was 
scarcely  a  peasant's  team  without  its  smart  little  colt 
frisking  along  beside  it.  In  a  word,  Lithuania,  al- 
though less  far  along  politically  than  its  two  northern 
neighbors,  and  less  developed  in  many  ways,  was 
economically  better  off. 

As  for  that  other  novelty  of  the  Lithuanian  scene, 
the  returned  Americans,  I  must,  in  the  first  morning 
in  Kovno,  (Kaunas  the  Lithuanians  call  it)  have  run 
across  half  a  dozen  of  them,  all  intent  on  getting 
their  little  nation  on  its  feet,  and  sometimes  even 
able  to  talk  enthusiastic  nationalism  one  minute,  and 
the  next  to  gossip  quite  objectively  about  "these  peo- 
ple" in  the  vernacular  of  Chicago  or  Scranton,  Penn- 
sylvania. The  Lithuanians  in  America  are  humble 
people  for  the  most  part,  working  in  mines  and  fac- 
tories, meeting  in  obscure  halls  to  talk  Lithuanian 
politics  and  sing  folk  songs,  and  little  known  to  Ameri- 
cans except  settlement-house  workers  and  their  im- 
mediate employers.  And  yet,  when  one  considers  the 
Lithuanian  printing  that  was  done  in  the  United  States 


THE  CASE  OF  LITHUANIA  205 

when  it  was  prohibited  by  the  Russian  Government  in 
Lithuania — there  is  even  such  a  thing  as  "The  Lithu- 
anian Booster"  I — and  the  proportion  of  the  Lithuanian 
intelligentsia  recruited  from  returned  emigrants,  it 
might  almost  be  said  that  if  the  national  movement 
was  born  in  the  Lithuanian  clerical  seminaries,  it  grew 
up  in  America. 

Mr.  Balutis,  for  instance,  who  was  acting  as  a 
sort  of  Assistant  Foreign  Minister,  and  Mr.  Rimka, 
one  of  the  land  reform  theorists,  had  both  edited 
Lithuanian  papers  in  the  States.  The  head  of  the 
Lithuanian  Health  Department  was  a  young  woman 
doctor  graduated  from  Cornell.  Her  sister,  also  a 
Cornell  student,  had  left  college  a  few  weeks  before 
graduation  to  marry  Mr.  Yeas  a  former  Lithuanian 
delegate  in  the  Russian  Duma  and  one  of  the  first 
Lithuanian  Ministers  of  Finance.  Their  father,  Dr. 
Jonas  Sliupas,  an  old  war-horse  in  the  Lithuanian 
national  movement,  had  been  one  of  the  editors  of  the 
Dawn,  and  it  was  quite  characteristic  that,  although 
he  had  spent  most  of  his  life  in  America  and  brought 
up  his  family  there,  he  should  represent  Lithuania  in 
1919  at  the  first  peace  conference  with  the  Bolshe- 
viks at  Dorpat. 

Still  another  member  of  this  redoubtable  family  was 
young  Mr.  Kestutis  Sliupas,  whose  first  name,  which 
is  that  of  one  of  the  ancient  Lithuanian  kings,  means, 
as  he  explained  to  me  with  a  dry  grin,  "one  who  can 
suffer  much."  Mr.  Sliupas  had  done  graduate  work 
at  Yale,  and  taught  physics  for  a  time  at  the  Univer- 
sity of  Wisconsin,  and  in  a  half  hour's  talk  he  touched 
familiarly  on  a  score  of  varying  phases  of  American 


206         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

life  all  the  way  from  the  "Hill"  at  Madison  to 
Greenwich  Village. 

"This  Nation-and-New  Republic  stuff  gets  on  your 
nerves  after  a  while,"  he  observed,  as  we  strolled 
through  the  streets  of  this  curious  capital,  where  Lithu- 
anian, Jewish  and  Polish  influences  were  all  clashing, 
"On  the  other  hand,  you  can't  stand  that  Nicholas- 
Murray-Butler-stuff  either!" 

He  told  of  one  of  his  relatives  who  had  taken  a 
drive  near  Warsaw  one  day  with  a  Polish  lady.  As 
they  passed  some  peasants,  the  Polish  lady  remarked, 
"Do  you  know  the  difference  between  those  people 
and  their  cattle?  The  only  difference  is  that  the  pea- 
sants don't  eat  grass!"  .  .  .  "Isn't  that  pure  Europe 
for  you?  It's  hard  for  an  American  to  understand 
that!"  Remarks  like  this  get  remembered  in  these 
days  by  people  whose  parents  or  grandparents  were 
themselves  peasants. 

The  tangled  municipal  affairs  of  Kovno  were  being 
handled  by  a  sort  of  three-cornered  commission,  with 
a  Lithuanian,  Jewish  and  Polish  member,  and  Sliupas, 
who  was  holding  up  the  Lithuanian  end  at  the  moment, 
spent  most  of  his  time  at  what  he  generally  referred 
to  as  "Tammany  Hall,"  wrangling  with  his  two 
colleagues  and  trying  to  get  them  to  forget  ancient 
jealousies  long  enough  to  put  the  right  man,  whoever 
he  might  be,  in  the  right  place,  and  get  some  con- 
structive work  done. 

Here  again,  as  in  the  case  of  Premier  Ulmannis  of 
Latvia,  war  and  revolution  had  made  a  new  "new 
country."  And  the  spirit  which  crackled  through  the 
streets  of  this  shabby  old  village  was  not  unlike  that 


THE  CASE  OF  LITHUANIA  207 

with  which  pioneers  used  to  load  up  prairie  schooners 
and  start  for  Kansas  or  California.  Nearly  all  these 
neo-pioneers  were  working  harder  and  getting  less 
pay  for  their  work  than  they  had  had  in  America,  and 
doing  so  for  motives  as  various,  I  suppose,  as  peoples' 
motives  usually  are.  Some  were  thinking  of  them- 
selves, doubtless,  and  some  of  Lithuania;  some  had 
risen  to  their  opportunity  and  were  doing  bigger  work 
than  they  had  ever  done  before ;  there  was  one  quaint 
little  lady  in  the  Foreign  Office,  who  had  come,  it 
seemed,  in  search  of  a  fatherland  which  she  could 
never  quite  find  anywhere  else. 

She  had  been  born  of  Lithuanian  parents  in  America, 
educated  partly  in  Switzerland  and  partly  in  New  Eng- 
land. There,  where  she  had  passed  most  of  her  life, 
she  would  doubtless  have  seemed  like  any  other  girl, 
and  she  liked  and  felt  at  home  in  the  States.  But  she 
had  been  brought  up  on  Lithuanian  history  and  folk- 
lore and  the  old  dalnos  poetry,  these  were  among  the 
things  she  first  remembered,  and  Lithuania  had  al- 
ways been  a  sort  of  sub-conscious  fatherland.  In 
Switzerland,  she  said,  she  had  envied  the  other  girls 
— Peruvians,  Greeks,  Argentinians,  Roumanians  and 
what  not — and  the  tremendous  and  undivided  patriot- 
ism each  had  for  her  little  country,  and  wished  she 
might  have  a  country  like  that — "for  her  very  own." 

For  this  she  had  come  to  Lithuania.  She  had 
landed  at  Memel  and  come  by  river-steamer  up  the 
Niemen,  and  across  a  picture  made  up  of  medieval 
legends  and  old  ballad  poetry  had  spread  the  actuality 
of  sodden  peasants  and  tumbledown  villages  with  pigs 
in  the  streets.  .  .  .  "But  it  is  a  pretty  country — don't 


208         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

you  think  so?"  she  demanded.  We  were  standing  on 
one  of  the  round  hills  outside  of  Kovno,  looking  down 
on  the  Vilya  and  the  broader  Niemen — "And  we 
will  make  it  a  success !"  .  .  . 

Her  part  in  this  task  at  the  moment  was  to  turn  into 
the  French  she  had  learned  in  Switzerland,  the  Lithu- 
anian replies  to  the  Polish  notes  in  the  southwestern 
boundary  disputes,  and  to  see  that  the  Lithuanians' 
private  sentiments  were  masked  in  a  verbiage  as  punc- 
tilious and  exquisite  as  that  in  which  Prince  Sapieha 
masked  his.  Educated  people  are  rare  in  these  new 
republics;  everyone  is  needed,  and  in  nearly  all  their 
Foreign  Offices,  one  finds  clever  girls  who  happen 
to  know  a  bit  of  English  or  French,  getting  glimpses 
of  the  inner  wheels  of  national  politics  which,  in 
older  countries,  come  only  to  politicians  or  diplomats 
of  experience. 

I  went  one  evening  to  a  meeting  to  which  the  Lithu- 
anians had  invited  several  of  the  government  people, 
with  the  notion  of  organizing  an  information-bureau 
or  Chamber  of  Commerce.  The  Cabinet  members 
were  a  bit  puzzled  as  to  the  purpose  of  the  gathering, 
not  having  had  much  experience  with  what  Sliupas 
explained  to  me  in  an  aside  was  merely  "a  little  of 
that  get-together,  Rotary  stuff !" 

The  meeting  was  held  in  a  pavillion  in  a  park  on 
one  of  the  big  wooded  hills  overlooking  the  city,  one 
of  the  few  places  of  beauty  in  Kovno.  It  was  a  moon- 
light night,  with  mist  on  the  lowlands,  and  one  looked 
out  through  an  open  space  between  the  trees  and 
down  on  low  roofs  and  white  towers  that  might  have 
been  in  Spain.  One  after  another,  the  returned  Lithu- 


THE  CASE  OF  LITHUANIA  209 

anian-Americans  got  up  and  in  the  frankest  fashion 
and  often  with  a  good  deal  of  humour  told  what  they 
thought  was  wrong  with  Kovno  and  Lithuanian  cus- 
toms, generally.  One  man  wanted  to  know,  for  in- 
stance, why  it  should  take  three  quarters  of  an  hour 
to  do  a  bit  of  business  in  a  bank  which  in  the  States 
would  be  concluded  in  five  minutes?  When  one  of 
the  young  functionaries  felt  a  draft  blowing  on  him, 
why  couldn't  he  get  up  and  close  the  window,  himself, 
instead  of  calling  a  girl,  who  called  a  boy,  who  might 
finally  close  it?  Was  it  always  necessary  to  kiss  a 
lady's  hand,  even  on  the  street  or  in  a  crowded  office? 
He  had  been  reprimanded,  he  said,  for  wearing  his 
hat  in  the  bank,  having  put  it  on  so  that  his  hands 
might  be  free  to  count  his  money.  He  had  told  his 
critic  to  hold  his  hat  for  him,  and  thus  the  money 
might  be  counted  and  local  custom  still  preserved. 

Most  of  the  discussion  was  of  a  more  serious  na- 
ture, there  was  a  good  deal  of  complaint  about  graft, 
and  through  it  all  America  was  held  up  as  a  model 
of  all  that  was  admirable  and  worthy  of  emulation. 
It  was  impressive,  recalling  the  side  of  America  that 
many  Lithuanian  immigrants  see,  to  find  these  re- 
turned Lithuanians  remembering  only  what  was  good 
about  their  adopted  country,  and  one  could  not  but 
wish  that  some  of  our  more  raucous  nationalists  might 
have  been  there  to  learn  something  about  their  fellow- 
citizens  of  foreign  birth. 

The  evening  gave  point  to  a  conversation  which  I 
later  had  with  one  of  the  ex-editors,  in  which  he  chat- 
ted amusingly  of  the  difficulties  he  had  had  in  war 
time,  translating  into  English  for  incompetent  censors, 


with  his  small  staff,  everything  he  printed  of  a  political 
nature.  He  thought  that  in  such  cases  supervision 
might  often  better  be  trusted  to  the  more  responsible 
members  of  the  foreign  colonies  themselves.  Immi- 
grants who  "made  good"  in  America  were  likely,  he 
said,  to  be  more  American  than  the  natives  themselves, 
and  more  intent  on  preserving  essentially  American 
institutions.  Moreover  they  knew  their  own  people, 
their  psychology  and  prejudices,  and  how  to  reach 
them.  He  spoke  of  indiscriminate  raids  and  ignorant 
handling  of  radicals.  At  any  average  "red"  meeting, 
he  said,  there  might  be  at  most  two  or  three  who  could 
be  called  "dangerous."  The  thing  was  to  know  who 
these  were,  and  not  break  up  the  whole  meeting  or 
arrest  the  whole  lot. 

"You  can't  make  an  American  in  a  few  days,"  he 
said,  "nor  with  a  club.  It  takes  time  and  tact  and 
education." 

There  appeared  to  be  less  Bolshevism  in  the  air 
here  in  Lithuania  than  in  either  Esthonia  or  Latvia. 
The  lack  of  an  industrial  proletariat,  the  comparative 
lack  of  political  consciousness  among  the  peasants, 
and  the  restraining  influence  of  the  Catholic  clergy — 
for  the  Lithuanians  like  the  Poles  with  whom  they 
had  so  long  been  associated,  are  devout  Roman  Catho- 
lics— might  all  be  suggested  as  partial  explanations 
of  this.  Here,  as  in  Esthonia,  there  had  been  a  slight 
drift  toward  the  Left,  and  "bourgeois"  liberals  of  the 
type  of  Dr.  Smetona,  were  for  the  moment  regarded 
somewhat  askance,  but  in  the  Constituent  Assembly  of 
112  members  there  were  only  about  a  dozen  Social 
Democrats.  The  majority  group  were  Christian 


THE  CASE  OF  LITHUANIA  211 

Democrats — a  collection  of  delegates  of  various 
shades  of  political  opinion  with  few  trained  men;  and 
the  next  in  numbers  were  the  so-called  Socialist-Popu- 
lists, described  by  one  of  the  Lithuanian-Americans  as 
a  radical-liberal  group  of  somewhat  the  same  leanings 
as,  for  example,  Prof.  Ross  of  the  University  of  Wis- 
consin. The  Prime  Minister,  Dr.  Grenius,  a  forceful 
country  doctor  from  the  town  of  Mariampole,  and 
Mr.  Rimka,  the  land  theorist,  late  of  Boston,  belonged 
to  this  party. 

The  Progressive  Party,  at  whose  name  the  more 
radical  Lithuanians  smiled  a  bit,  had  no  delegates  in 
the  Assembly  and  yet  contained  most  of  those  who 
stood  out  by  reason  of  their  greater  sophistication 
and  broader  European  experience.  Dr.  Smetona,  a 
scholar-publicist  before  his  election  as  President;  the 
Finance  Minister,  Mr.  Galvanauskas,  a  clever  young 
man,  educated  at  Liege,  married  to  a  French  lady, 
and  acquainted,  as  civil  engineer,  with  various  parts 
of  Europe ;  Mr.  Yeas,  formerly  one  of  the  Cadet  rep- 
resentatives in  the  Duma,  were  all  members  of  this 
group.  Men  of  this  type  are  so  much  needed  in  any 
such  new  state  that  they  sometimes  more  or  less  run 
things  whether  their  party  happens  to  be  represented 
in  the  Assembly  or  not. 

THE  LAND  AND   FOREIGN  TRADE 

The  territory  which  the  Lithuanians  might  reason- 
ably call  their  own  is  about  the  size  of  New  York 
State  or  Illinois.  It  is  for  the  most  part  rich  agricul- 
tural country,  of  which  about  39%,  so  the  Land  Min- 
ister informed  me,  was  cultivated;  25%  was  covered 


212         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

with  forests;  22%  was  used  for  grazing;  and  14% 
made  up  of  marsh  land  and  peat  bogs.  Nearly  half 
of  the  whole  area,  he  said,  was  in  large  estates  of 
over  500  acres,  60%  of  which  were  more  or  less 
heavily  mortgaged  before  the  war,  and  would,  so 
many  think,  have  been  broken  up  by  natural  economic 
pressure  in  another  thirty  years. 

There  was  talk  of  nationalizing  the  large  forests, 
lakes,  rivers  and  peat  bogs;  of  parcelling  estates  given, 
or  sold  at  a  nominal  sum,  to  the  present  owners  or 
their  ancestors  in  return  for  special  services  to  the 
Tsars;  estates  not  worked  by  their  owners;  and  those 
owned  by  persons  guilty  of  treason  to  the  present  state 
of  Lithuania.  The  Polish  Chief  of  State,  Pilsudski, 
for  instance,  is  one  of  many  Polonized  Lithuanians, 
and  as  the  leader  of  an  army  which  had  invaded  Lithu- 
anian territory  and  seized  what  the  Lithuanians  re- 
gard as  their  capital  city,  Vilna,  he  was  spoken  of 
as  a  "traitor"  by  some  of  the  more  violent  nationalists, 
who  demanded  that  his  Lithuanian  property  be  con- 
fiscated. 

The  feeling  against  the  Polish  landlords,  as  land- 
lords, seemed  to  be  a  good  deal  less  definite  and  con- 
sciously worked  up  than  the  similar  feeling  in  Es- 
thonia  and  Latvia  against  the  Baits,  and  the  general 
attitude  of  the  land  theorists  more  conservative.  While 
both  Christian  Democrats  and  Socialist-Populists  were 
thoroughgoing  enough  in  their  plans  for  parcelling, 
both  said  that  this  should  not  be  done  without  com- 
pensation. Mr.  Rimka,  the  theorist  of  the  latter  party, 
spoke  of  the  necessity  of  keeping  up  production,  what- 
ever reforms  were  undertaken;  he  was  for  all  compen- 


THE  CASE  OF  LITHUANIA  213 

sation  practicable  without  putting  too  great  a  burden 
on  the  state,  and  intent  on  avoiding  speculators  and 
building  up  a  class  of  solid  small-farm  proprietors. 

Nearly  90,000  acres,  mostly  as  I  understood  it, 
from  former  Crown  lands,  had  been  parcelled  out  al- 
ready and  given  chiefly  to  soldiers.  There  were  avail- 
able for  parcelling,  it  was  said,  nearly  1,600,000  acres, 
and  the  whole  program  was  not  to  be  completed  short 
of  fifteen  or  twenty  years.  The  suggested  size  of  the 
small  farms  was  20  dessiatins,  or  about  60  acres,  and 
here,  as  in  Esthonia,  the  new  owners  were  to  have  a 
six  years'  trial,  and  if  they  proved  satisfactory  farmers, 
they  were  to  acquire  actual  property  rights. 

We  had  a  glimpse  of  the  old  order  in  Lithuania 
on  the  estate  of  Count  Tyszkiewicz — the  Count  was 
said  to  have  twenty-nine  others  in  Lithuania  and  the 
family  has  many  branches — on  the  beautiful  hills  above 
the  river  Vilija,  a  few  miles  outside  of  Kovno.  The 
Lithuanians  were  using  the  place  as  an  artillery  school. 

Although  occupied  by  various  armies  during  the 
war,  this  particular  estate  had  suffered  little.  At  the 
time  of  the  German  occupation,  when  it  looked  as  if 
Lithuania  might  become  another  Bavaria,  under  a 
German  King,  the  "Red  Estate,"  as  this  was  called 
from  the  red-brick  color  of  its  curious  old  manor- 
house,  was  used  by  one  of  the  German  princes.  The 
owner  had  succeeded  in  trimming  his  sails  to  the  wind, 
and  with  his  name — (pronounced  "Tys-kay-vitch" ) — 
spelled  in  Lithuanian  fashion,  "Tiskevicius,"  was  rep- 
resenting Lithuania  in  London,  quite  as  much  to  the 
advantage  of  the  new  republic,  doubtless,  as  to  him- 


self.  And  although  the  former  Majordomo,  who  took 
us  through  the  house,  pointing  out  family  portraits 
and  speaking  of  the  parents  of  the  Count  with  quaintly 
intimate  respect  as  "Papa"  and  "Mamma,"  mourned 
the  loss  of  many  things,  the  old  French  furniture,  the 
library  with  its  Russian,  French,  German  and  English 
books,  the  paintings  and  prints  and  even  the  hunting 
trophies,  were  much  as  they  had  been. 

It  was  while  reading  the  names  under  one  of  the 
portraits — that  of  a  demurely  pretty  young  lady  in  a 
costume  of  the  eighties  or  early  nineties,  of  whom  there 
were  many  pictures — that  I  ran  across  "Bancroftova" 
in  between  several  Christian  names  and  the  final 
"Tyszkiewicz."  Was  the  former  Countess  an  Ameri- 
can then,  one  of  the  Bancrofts?  The  caretaker  said 
that  she  was,  the  daughter  of  a  banker.  He  showed 
other  pictures  after  that,  formal  picnics,  house  parties, 
and  amateur  theatricals,  and  taking  us  out  into  the 
Park,  pointed  out  the  winding  road  leading  from  the 
river  up  through  the  trees,  which,  he  said,  the  Count 
had  hewn  out  in  honor  of  his  bride  when  she  came 
to  the  house  for  the  first  time. 

One  could  imagine  a  pleasant  and  gracious  life  up 
there  on  the  hill  in  the  trees,  looking  down  on  the  Vilija 
and  miles  of  comfortable  country,  with  other  estates 
nearby  to  visit,  and  visits  further  afield  to  Warsaw  or 
Paris  or  the  Riviera — a  life  which,  for  thousands  of 
amiable,  more  or  less  decorative  people  in  what  used 
to  be  Russia,  is  going  or  gone.  Even  were  the  owner 
to  succeed  in  adjusting  himself  to  the  new  order  in 
Lithuania,  it  was  doubtful  that  such  a  place  would 
again  become  a  private  residence.  If  the  central  por- 


THE  CASE  OF  LITHUANIA  215 

tion  were  not  kept  by  the  artillerists,  it  would  doubt- 
less be  turned  into  a  school,  hospital,  model  farm, 
or  other  semi-public  use,  and  the  land  itself  parcelled 
into  small  farms. 

In  the  land,  naturally,  and  the  forests  that  grow  on 
the  land,  lie  the  main  resources  of  this  essentially 
agricultural  state.  Before  the  war  there  were  minor 
iron  and  textile  manufactures  in  Kovno  and  Vilna,  and 
spirits  were  distilled  from  potatoes  as  in  the  neighbor- 
ing states.  These  and  other  industries  will  doubtless 
be  started  again,  and  the  damage  done  by  war  naturally 
suggested  the  desirability  of  using  some  of  their  own 
trees  for  furniture  and  their  own  sand  for  glass.  Out 
of  Memel,  Prussian  before  the  war,  and  Lithuania's 
natural  outlet  to  the  sea,  went  annually  in  the  old  days 
some  five  million  dollars  worth  of  timber,  most  of 
which  had  been  floated  down  the  Niemen  from  the 
Lithuanian  and  White  Russian  forests.  Three-fourths 
of  the  Lithuanians  are  farmers,  however,  and  import- 
ant as  the  carrying  trade  with  Russia  may  one  day 
be,  the  main  preoccupation  for  the  present  with  the 
essentially  Lithuanian — as  distinguished  from  the  Jew- 
ish— population  will  be  the  land. 

Rather  better  fed  than  their  northern  neighbors, 
they  were  like  them  at  the  start  of  their  independence 
in  needing  capital  and  nearly  every  manufactured 
thing.  The  Germans  loaned  them  a  hundred  million 
marks  shortly  after  the  armistice,  and  continued  later, 
partly  because  of  nearness  and  the  fact  that  they  con- 
tinued after  the  war  to  use  German  marks  and  Ost- 
marks  as  their  medium  of  exchange,  to  supply  them 


with  most  of  their  indispensable  imports.  Lithuania's 
strategic  situation,  squarely  between  Russia  and  Ger- 
many, with  a  navigable  river,  the  Niemen,  running 
down  from  the  Russian  border  to  the  sea,  gives  her 
an  interest  to  outsiders  more  compelling  than  merely 
local  needs  unsupplied,  and  the  rest  of  the  world,  with 
the  exception  of  ourselves  has  not  been  slow  to  act 
on  it. 

The  British,  particularly,  have  made  the  Lithuani- 
ans, along  with  the  other  Baltic  nationalities,  their 
little  brothers.  They  were  among  the  first  to  grant 
de  facto  recognition;  they  opened  a  Consulate,  sent  a 
Military  Mission  and  a  succession  of  civilian  scouts. 
It  was  arranged  that  a  considerable  portion  of  the 
Lithuanian  flax — a  Government  monopoly — should  be 
sold  in  England  on  a  commission  basis  through  an 
English  bank.  It  was  proposed  that  the  Lithuanians 
should  issue  their  own  currency  with  tneir  timber  as 
a  basis,  under  an  arrangement  profitable  to  the  English 
financiers  who  were  to  assist  in  the  operation.  Visitors 
to  the  British  consulate  at  one  time  might  while  away 
their  time  in  the  waiting-room  looking  at  the  anti- 
Polish  Lithuanian  posters  on  the  wall,  and  the  Consul 
was  regarded  by  the  Poles  as  so  partisan  in  his  friend- 
liness for  the  Lithuanians  that  he  was  transferred. 
In  short,  the  British  were  doing  everything  to  make 
themselves  solid,  to  get  control  of  Lithuania's  financial 
possibilities,  and  pending  the  opening  up  of  Russia, 
to  prepare  here  a  bridge  into  that  promised  land. 

The  French  also  had  their  Military  Mission  in 
Kovno,  but  their  interest  in  a  strong  Poland,  and  the 
fact  that  Lithuanian  flax  was  being  smuggled  into  the 


THE  CASE  OF  LITHUANIA  217 

Memel  district  while  it  was  under  French  occupation, 
did  not  make  them  popular.  Other  things  being  equal, 
the  Lithuanians,  like  many  of  these  East  Europeans, 
would  prefer  to  see  development  undertaken  by  Ameri- 
cans for  the  simple  reason  that  we  are  presumed  to 
have  no  political  or  territorial  preoccupations.  They 
would  have  liked  our  cheap  automobiles  and  tractors. 
The  grotesque  water  and  sanitary  arrangements  in 
Kovno — ordinary  wells  and  cess-pools — cried  for  im- 
provement now  that  Kovno  was  by  way  of  being  a 
capital.  The  Minister  of  Finance,  Mr.  Galvanauskus, 
in  speaking  of  these  and  other  needs,  spoke  particularly 
of  the  development  of  the  Niemen's  water  power  as 
something  that  might  interest  a  large  American  electri- 
cal company.  There  was  said  to  be  enough  power 
easily  available  in  the  river  above  Kovno  to  light  both 
Kovno  and  Vilna,  displace  the  former's  horse-cars, 
and  revolutionize  the  whole  power  and  transporta- 
tion situation  of  the  country,  then  largely  dependent 
on  wood  for  fuel. 

The  existence  of  such  opportunities  did  not,  of 
course,  imply  that  Americans  cared  to  take  them  up. 
There  was  the  difficulty  of  payment  here  as  elsewhere, 
and  there  might  be  just  as  good  chances  of  investment 
nearer  home  which  would  give  employment  to  our 
own  citizens.  But  the  active  interests  of  other  govern- 
ments, the  active  role  played  by  returned  Lithuanian- 
Americans,  the  Lithuanian  population  in  America  it- 
self, did  throw  into  rather  curious  relief  our  policy  of 
ignoring  Lithuania. 

We  had  given  no  sort  of  recognition,  there  was 
neither  Military  Mission  nor  Consulate,  and  the  only 


218         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

visible  sign  of  the  power  and  authority  of  the  United 
States  was  an  American  flag  hanging  from  the  second 
story  window  of  a  branch  station  of  the  American  Red 
Cross.  The  two  officers  in  charge  were  supposed  to 
distribute  food,  blankets,  gray  knit  sweaters  and  the 
like,  but  a  good  deal  of  their  time  was  taken  up  at- 
tending to  the  hundred  and  one  questions  and  wants 
of  a  people  who  had  a  million  relatives  in  the  United 
States  and  Canada. 

Most  of  them  were  hunting  for  passport  visas.  Some 
were  just  hopefully  starting  on  this  long  and  wearisome 
quest.  Some,  with  sweat  rolling  down  their  faces 
and  their  hands  full  of  papers  the  language  of  which 
they  couldn't  understand,  were  wallowing  in  the  diffi- 
culties which  not  unnaturally  resulted  from  trying  to 
do  business  through  a  Consulate  in  another  country 
(Latvia)  with  a  State  Department  five  thousand  mUes 
away.  Some  wanted  to  know  what  had  become  of 
the  money  sent  by  their  American  relatives  and  held 
up  in  Poland  or  lost  somewhere  in  the  tangle  of  cen- 
sorships and  demoralized  postal  systems  which  ob- 
structed all  eastern  Europe.  On  the  day  I  reached 
Kovno,  one  old  man  came  to  get  the  insurance  money 
made  over  to  him  by  his  son  killed  fighting  in  the 
American  army  in  France.  (The  Lithuanians  say 
that  about  50,000  Americans  of  Lithuanian  descent 
were  in  the  American  army.)  All  the  peasant  father 
had  was  a  notice  stating  that  the  insurance  money  was 
due  him,  and  the  photograph  of  a  field  of  wooden 
crosses  under  one  of  which,  he  was  informed,  lay  the 
body  of  his  son.  The  collection  of  this  money  and  the 
identification  of  the  father  involved  the  taking  of  affi- 


THE  CASE  OF  LITHUANIA  219 

davits  in  America  and  the  supplying  there  of  infor- 
mation about  the  boy's  relatives  in  Lithuania,  so  elab- 
orate and  detailed  as — communications  being  what 
they  were — to  seem  almost  impossible  for  him  to  get. 
At  any  rate,  so  the  Red  Cross  man  thought.  Plainly 
such  payments  should  be  hedged  about  with  suitable 
formalities,  but  plainly,  too,  it  would  have  been  a 
good  deal  easier  for  peasants  who  did  not  speak  Eng- 
lish if  there  had  been  in  Kovno  a  Consulate  to  which 
they  might  have  gone  for  help  and  advice. 

The  Consul  in  Riga  was  too  busy  to  visit  Kovno 
more  than  about  once  in  every  two  months,  and  for 
the  Lithuanians  to  go  to  Riga  meant  getting  permis- 
sion to  leave  their  own  country  and  to  get  into  Latvia, 
by  no  means  easy,  and  an  expense  which  most  of  them 
could  ill  afford.  Nor  must  it  be  assumed  that  when 
all  of  these  difficulties  were  surmounted  and  their 
applications  sent  on  to  Washington,  our  State  Depart- 
ment displayed  any  very  startling  examples  of  Ameri- 
can efficiency.  The  Latvian  Government,  for  instance, 
wished  to  send  a  representative  to  the  United  States. 
His  application  for  a  passport  visa,  officially  made  for 
him  by  the  Latvian  Government,  was  cabled  to  Wash- 
ington with  a  recommendation  from  the  United  States 
Commissioner  in  Riga  for  immediate  action.  One 
might  expect  that  such  a  request  would  at  least  be 
acknowledged  by  return  cable.  Not  so.  When  I  met 
the  would-be  Latvian  representative  he  was  sitting 
on  one  of  the  Riga  beaches  acquiring  tan.  He  had 
been  there  then,  he  said,  for  nearly  two  months,  and 
while  it  was  pleasant  enough,  it  was  not  a  particularly 
useful  life,  and  he  hoped  that  our  Government  might 


220 

soon  act,  as  the  Baltic  summers  are  short.  After  three 
months'  wait  without  reply  of  any  sort  to  repeated 
cables,  our  Commissioner,  who  had  of  course  himself 
to  ask  many  favors  of  the  Government  with  which  he 
was  constantly  dealing  even  if  we  had  not  recognized 
it,  cabled  that  in  the  absence  of  a  negative  reply  he 
would  take  the  responsibility  of  granting  a  visa  him- 
self. Still  no  answer.  The  visa  was  given,  the  man 
started,  and  was  midway  in  the  Atlantic  when  word 
came  that  he  was  "inacceptable." 

THE  LITHUANIAN  ZION 

Among  the  minor  embarrassments  to  travel  in  the 
Baltic  republics  is  the  enthusiasm  of  these  young 
nations  for  changing  street  and  shop  signs  into  their 
own  language.  When  hotel  becomes  woirastemaja, 
restaurant  soogisaal  and  barber  habemeajaja,  the 
Westerner  begins  really  to  feel  abroad.  Long  street 
might  be  guessed  from  Langstrasse  but  the  Esthonian 
Pikuul  is  another  matter.  In  both  Reval  and  Riga, 
where  streets  used  to  be  known  by  their  German  as 
commonly  as  by  their  Esthonian  or  Lettish  names,  they 
are  now  turned  into  their  native  tongues  which  re- 
semble the  languages  usually  studied  in  western  Europe 
or  America  about  as  much  as  Chinese  or  Choctaw. 

Here  in  Kovno  street  names  had  been  put  into 
all  three  of  the  local  languages,  Lithuanian,  Polish 
and  Hebrew,  and  while  this  might  not  help  the  Ameri- 
can much,  it  meant  a  great  deal  to  the  inhabitants, 
more  than  half  of  whom  are  Jews.  "It  is  a  symbol," 
one  of  the  latter  remarked  to  me,  solemnly,  pointing 
out  the  window  at  the  street-sign  on  the  corner;  a 


THE  CASE  OF  LITHUANIA  221 

symbol  of  that  "cultural  autonomy"  which  the  Jews 
had  won  for  themselves  here — and  would  like  to  win 
in  Poland — and  which  makes  them  almost  a  home- 
rule  island  in  the  small  Lithuanian  sea. 

The  Kovno  shop  signs  were  a  quaint  example  of 
the  drive  in  the  opposite  direction,  toward  Lithuanian 
nationalism.  Nearly  all  the  Kovno  shops  are  run 
by  Jews,  just  as  they  are  in  Poland,  and  the  long  main 
street  is  just  one  Jewish  name  after  another.  But 
the  owners  of  all  these  names  had  been  forced,  since 
Lithuanian  independence,  to  take  the  Lithuanian  ter- 
mination as,  and  one  bought  fruit,  groceries  and  hats 
from  Messrs.  Goldsteinas,  Rosenbergas,  Apfelbaumas, 
and  so  on.  And  that  was  also  a  symbol. 

The  Lithuania  of  which  the  home-sick  immigrant 
dreams  as  he  looks  back  to  it  from  the  Pennsylvania 
steel-mills  or  Chicago  stock-yards — the  real  Lithuania, 
as  one  might  call  it — is  a  rich  and  placid  land  of 
farms,  scarce  touched  by  modern  industry.  The 
country  is  rolling  prairie  with  a  good  deal  of  timber. 
Along  the  dusty  road,  every  few  miles,  there  rise  tall, 
weather-beaten  wooden  crucifixes,  and  near  the  villages 
one  meets  perhaps  a  church  procession,  with  priests 
and  holy  banners.  One  drives  for  miles  and  never 
sees  a  town;  only  from  time  to  time  a  comfortable 
village,  with  its  big  white  church  enclosed  by  a  white 
wall  and  shaded  by  lime  trees,  and  a  stream  where 
little  goose  girls  knit  and  watch  their  geese,  and  on 
the  long,  drowsy  Sundays,  peasants  come  to  bathe. 

The  Lithuania  one  sees  in  Kovno,  and  to  a  certain 
extent  in  Vilna,  is  quite  another  thing.  In  Kovno,  the 


222         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

Jews,  although  making  up  rather  less  than  one-fifth 
of  the  country's  population,  are  in  the  majority.  Trade 
is  in  their  hands.  And  because  there  are  too  many 
of  them,  and  not  enough  of  their  particular  sort  of 
middle-man  business  to  go  around,  and  most  of  them 
were  uprooted  and  flung  eastward  by  the  war  and 
are  just  beginning  to  get  rooted  again,  they  are  wretch- 
edly poor.  There  are  old  men  in  gabardines  with 
patriarchal  beards  and  side-curls,  and  sharp-faced 
young  men  just  back  from  America  in  the  latest  edi- 
tions of  American  store-clothes;  wrinkled  old  women 
in  brown  wigs,  and  fuzzy-headed,  dark-skinned  girls 
with  an  air  of  the  desert.  And  all  of  them,  packed  into 
their  chattering  streets,  as  Jews  pack  themselves  into 
their  Ghettos  everywhere,  are  as  distinct  from  the  blue- 
eyed,  placid  Lithuanians  as  so  many  crows  in  a  flock 
of  sheep. 

It  was  among  the  poorer  of  these  Jews  that  the  Red 
Cross  was  largely  working,  and  I  stood  by  the  battered 
old  A.  R.  C.  ambulance  one  morning  in  the  square 
at  Kovno,  while  a  long  queue  of  them  slowly  edged 
toward  it,  watching  it,  as  if  it  might  somehow  get 
away  from  them,  with  the  eyes  of  puzzled,  hungry 
hawks.  Too  used  to  deceit  and  rough  handling  to  be 
patient,  too  ignorant  to  be  grateful,  they  only  knew 
that  if  they  stood  in  line  long  enough  and  showed  the 
right  slip  of  paper,  something  for  nothing  came  out  of 
that  car — blankets,  sweaters,  cotton  stuff  for  shirts, 
it  didn't  matter  much  which. 

They  gouged  each  other  out  of  place  in  the  line, 
fought  with  the  Red  Cross  man  who  was  superin- 
tending the  distribution,  complained  after  the  stuff 


THE  CASE  OF  LITHUANIA 

was  given  them  that  it  was  not  what  they  wanted,  or 
not  enough.  It  seemed  the  wreckage  of  oldest  Europe, 
squabbling  there  like  caged  animals  for  bits  of  flesh. 
The  battered  Ford  car  which  had  already  bounced 
and  snarled  its  way  through  several  adventurous  years 
on  the  French  front,  was  jaunty  and  youthful  in  com- 
parison, and  one  caught  an  echo  of  another  world,  in- 
credibly fresh  and  hopeful,  as  one  read  on  the  brass 
plate  on  the  front  of  the  car, — "From  Surprise  Valley, 
Modoc  County,  California."  .  .  . 

The  Committee  of  Jewish  Delegations  at  Paris  in 
the  spring  of  1919  demanded  that  the  Jewish  minori- 
ties in  the  several  countries  spoken  for,  should  consti- 
tute "distinct,  autonomous  organizations,  and  as  such 
have  the  right  to  establish,  manage  and  control  schools, 
religious,  educational,  charitable  and  social  institu- 
tions." They  should  have  the  right  to  use  their  lan- 
guage in  the  courts  and  elsewhere ;  a  proportional  part 
of  the  public  funds  intended  for  schools  and  other 
public  services;  proportional  representation  in  the  leg- 
islative bodies,  and  the  right  to  rest  on  their  own 
Sabbath,  and  to  work,  if  they  chose,  on  the  Christian 
Sunday. 

In  August  1919,  the  Lithuanian  Peace  Delegation 
in  Paris  made  a  declaration  granting  practically  all 
these  demands.  The  Lithuanian  Jews  were  to  have 
the  rights  of  other  citizens,  proportional  representa- 
tion in  the  Government,  and  a  special  Ministry  for 
their  own  affairs.  While  Lithuanian  was  to  be  the 
language  of  the  State,  and  all  public  institutions  must 
correspond  in  it,  and  its  study  be  compulsory  in  the 


224         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

schools,  the  Jews  might  use  their  own  language  in 
their  own  schools  and  newspapers.  They  were  to 
have  the  right  to  their  own  Sabbath  and  their  rabbis 
were  to  have  the  same  legal  position  as  priests  of  other 
faiths.  Teaching  in  the  Jewish  schools  was  to  be 
compulsory,  universal  and  free,  if  similar  obligations 
were  imposed  on  other  primary  schools. 

The  "organs  of  autonomy"  were  to  be  local  com- 
mittees or  councils,  working  in  conjunction  with  a  cen- 
tral council.  The  Ministry  of  Jewish  Affairs  was  to 
act  as  a  sort  of  liaison  body  between  the  Central  Coun- 
cil and  the  Lithuanian  Government.  The  local  coun- 
cils were  to  have  the  rights  of  legal  persons  to  receive 
donations  or  gifts  from  wills.  The  Jews  might  take 
obligatory  resolutions  for  their  co-nationals  and  tax 
them.  If  these  taxes  were  not  paid  they  could  appeal 
to  the  central  Lithuanian  Government  for  force  to 
compel  payment. 

Not  all  the  clauses  of  the  Lithuanian  declaration — 
"our  Magna  Charta,"  as  one  of  the  Kovno  Jews  de- 
scribed it  to  me — had  been  carried  out.  There  was  not 
enough  money  or  teachers  to  make  primary  education 
compulsory  in  either  the  Lithuanian  or  the  Jewish 
schools.  The  question  of  the  Jewish  Sabbath,  and 
whether  Jews  might  be  permitted  to  do  business  on 
the  Christian  Sunday,  was  not  clearly  decided.  But 
in  January,  1920,  representatives  of  78  local  Jewish 
committees  had  met  and  elected  a  national  council, 
and  when  I  reached  Kovno  in  the  summer,  a  Ministry 
for  Jewish  Affairs,  with  a  Minister,  minor  officials 
and  Press  Department,  was  functioning  between  the 


THE  CASE  OF  LITHUANIA  225 

Jewish  minority  and  the  Lithuanians  very  much  in  the 
fashion  of  the  usual  Foreign  Office. 

This  ministry  was  above  a  row  of  shops,  on  the 
second  floor  of  a  low  white  stucco  building,  a  little 
way  down  into  the  "old  town"  and  the  Jewish  quar- 
ter, from  Kovno's  long  main  street.  With  a  few 
minor  changes  in  scenery,  the  place  might  have  been 
duplicated  on  New  York's  East  Side,  in  Warsaw,  or 
in  any  other  Ghetto  neighborhood.  There  were  simi- 
lar shops  all  about  with  cheap  clothing  and  jewelry, 
wilted  fruit  and  queer-colored  drinks;  the  same  patri- 
archal old  men  and  sharp-eyed  young  ones,  the  same 
avid  air  of  bargaining  and  never-relaxing  struggle  for 
existence. 

Inside,  the  Ministry  again  suggested  what  such  a 
Ministry  might  be  were  it  transferred  to  Grand  or 
Rutgers  street.  The  stooping,  owl-like  old  gentleman 
in  black  glasses,  who  acted  as  a  sort  of  page  or  messen- 
ger in  the  outer  office,  might  have  just  come  from 
selling  shoe-strings  at  the  entrance  to  the  Second  Ave- 
nue "L."  The  brisk  young  people  further  in,  hurry- 
ing about  with  papers  or  whacking  type-writers,  could 
have  been  matched  in  any  East  Side  settlement  or  the- 
atre audience.  The  consideration  with  which,  as  a 
complete  outsider,  one  was  received,  contrasted  char- 
acteristically with  the  brusque,  even  over-bearing  man- 
ner which  these  newly-placed  officials  had  soon  learned 
to  adopt  toward  timid  petitioners  of  their  own  people. 
And  when  one  finally  reached  the  Minister  himself, 
one  felt  that  curious  inner  concentration,  that  brood- 
ing self-absorption,  with  which  the  Hebrew,  in  con- 


226         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

trast  with  the  more  boisterous,  blue-eyed  northern 
races,  so  often  seems  to  wrap  himself  away  from  our 
comparatively  youthful  and  frivolous  western  world. 

A  Lithuanian  might  be  as  different  as  you  please 
from  his  American  visitor,  yet  as  long  as  he  was  talking 
to  you  he  had  the  air  of  wanting  to  be  accepted  as 
"one  of  the  same  crowd."  Mr.  Soloveichik — if  one 
is  not  making  too  much  of  a  few  minutes'  conversa- 
tion— had  the  air  of  being  little  interested  in  such 
amenities.  He  came  of  a  race  too  ancient  and  too 
long-suffering  to  bother  about  such  matters;  a  tough- 
minded  minority,  trained  by  centuries  of  oppression 
and  hardship  to  defend  itself,  and  while  accepting  its 
present  position  as  a  sort  of  partner  in  the  new  nation- 
alism as  the  best  thing  that  offered,  nevertheless,  here 
as  elsewhere,  keeping  its  eyes  fixed  on  the  main  chance. 
If  this  "autonomy"  meant  anything  real,  all  very  well, 
they  would  make  the  most  of  it.  They  were  too  old 
to  have  illusions,  or  to  waste  time  in  congratulatory 
words. 

The  comparatively  detached  attitude  of  the  Lithu- 
anian Jews  toward  Lithuanian  nationalism  was  sug- 
gested both  by  what  they  said  and  by  some  of  the 
literature  of  their  Press  Department.  In  one  pamph- 
let, for  instance,  given  me  principally  for  its  statistics 
on  the  Jewish  population  in  Lithuania,  there  was  a 
scathing  arraignment  of  Lithuanian  claims  to  inde- 
pendence, including  the  observation  that  Lithuanians, 
"next  to  Albanians,  are  the  most  primitive  people  in 
Europe."  The  young  man  who  had  given  me  the 
pamphlet  explained  with  a  faint  smile,  when  I  had 
called  his  attention  to  it,  that  the  Jewish  author  hap- 


THE  CASE  OF  LITHUANIA  227 

pened  to  be  very  Germanophile,  and  that  the  pamphlet 
was  published  during  the  German  occupation  of  Lithu- 
ania, when  present  developments  could  scarcely  have 
been  foreseen. 

Another  summary  of  the  economic  situation  of  the 
Lithuanian  Jews   spoke   of   the   comparatively  good 
times  enjoyed  during  the  occupation.     "In   1917  the 
situation  began  to  improve.     The  compulsory  work 
introduced  by  the  Germans  was  transformed,  as  the 
occupation  grew  milder,  into  public  works.     War-con- 
tracts for  the  German  army  led  to  a  certain  concen- 
tration of  capital  in  the  hands  of  the  Jews,  especially 
of  those  who  supplied  provisions  and  wood.     The 
presence  of  the  army,  and  the  material  prosperity  of 
the  native  population  led  to  a  great  demand  for  the 
products  of  Jewish  handicraft.      Certain  sections  of 
the  Jewish  population  gained  a  foothold  in  the  lower 
divisions  of  municipal  and  state  service,  and  on  the 
railways.     Large  groups  of  Jews  engaged  in  agricul- 
ture, leasing  the  estates  abandoned  by  owners  in  their 
flight."      Since   Lithuanian   independence   these    foot- 
holds have  not  infrequently  been  lost.     "Thousands  of 
Jewish  workers  have  been  dismissed  mostly  on  the 
ground  of  their  ignorance  of  the  Lithuanian  language 
.  .  .  Jewish  handicraft  lost  most  of  its  customers  when 
the  German  occupation  came  to  an  end.     During  the 
war  the  village  populations  began  to   supply  them- 
selves with  their  household  requisites." 

Along  with  these  regrets  were  reports  of  growing 
Jewish  strength.  The  educated  class  had  returned 
from  its  war-time  flight.  Lithuania  was  covered  by 
a  network  of  democratically  elected  committees.  Popu- 


228        NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

lar  banks  were  being  organized  with  the  plan  of  ulti- 
mate consolidation  with  a  "central  bank  which  shall 
enjoy  the  support  not  merely  of  the  Jewish  population 
in  Lithuania,  but  of  large  Jewish  institutions  abroad." 

That  the  rather  easy-going,  agricultural  Lithuani- 
ans might  fear  commercial  submergence  and  the  for- 
mation of  an  embarrassing  state  within  the  state, 
seemed  natural,  yet  most  of  those  with  whom  I  talked 
appeared  to  have  no  such  misgivings.  Some  remarked, 
rather  whimsically,  that  they  expected  that  when 
Russia  opened  up,  the  Jews  would  repair  thither,  or  if 
not,  that  they  would  emigrate  to  America.  Others 
said  that  all  possible  dangers  had  been  considered  be- 
fore the  autonomy  was  granted,  and  that  there  were  al- 
ways ways  in  which  a  governing  majority  could  pro- 
tect itself.  Government  monopolies  already  restricted 
the  available  field  of  profitable  enterprise;  if  necessary, 
pressure  of  this  sort  could  be  extended. 

While  such  measures  can  scarcely  be  regarded  as 
"normal,"  nor  permanently  desirable  in  healthy  states, 
no  one  familiar  with  Eastern  European  governmental 
customs  since  the  war,  need  be  surprised  to  find  a  ra- 
cial majority  looking  forward  to  using  them.  These 
majorities  can  and  therefore  they  do,  and  anyone  as- 
suming the  contrary  is  likely  to  have  his  fingers  burned. 

The  permanence  of  this  "cultural  autonomy" — in 
the  granting  of  which  expediency  and  the  aim  of  unit- 
ing Lithuanian  strength  against  the  Poles  had  a  part 
— remains  to  be  seen,  of  course,  but  there  is  an  experi- 
mental interest  in  the  fact  that  the  Jews  have  here 
what  they  would  like  to  have  in  Poland  and  elsewhere, 


THE  CASE  OF  LITHUANIA  229 

and  what  the  Poles  are  determined  they  shall  not  get. 
There  are  more  Jews  in  proportion  to  the  population 
in  Poland  than  in  Lithuania;  the  Polish  majority  is 
much  more  sophisticated  and  politically  conscious,  and 
the  struggle  between  the  two  groups  is  correspondingly 
more  intense.  But  the  remarks  of  Captain  Wright  in  his 
personal  postscript  to  the  report  of  the  Sir  Stuart 
Samuel  Commission,  applies  wherever  "eastern"  or 
Orthodox  Jews  are  found  in  large  numbers  in  the 
West. 

"The  civilization  of  nothing  less  than  half  the  Polish 
Jews,"  he  said,  "is  not  only  far  from  European,  but  it 
is  also  very  primitive.  It  is  the  civilization  of  the  age 
of  Ezra  and  Nehemiah.  .  .  .  Their  very  antiquity 
made  the  Orthodox  Jews  the  most  interesting  race  in 
Poland,  and  their  Rabbis  were  venerable  with  all  the 
dignity  of  the  East.  .  .  .  Nothing  could  be  more  im- 
pressive than  the  preservation  of  this  old  Semitic 
culture,  which  is  not  only  older  than  European  civili- 
zation, but  older  than  the  civilizations,  Latin  and  By- 
zantine, now  long  extinguished,  from  which  European 
civilization  is  itself  derived.  The  ridicule  and  con- 
tempt affected  for  it  by  the  Poles  and  many  Jews 
who  are  not  Orthodox,  is  shallow  and  ignorant.  But 
nothing  could  be  more  difficult  to  associate  with  than 
a  people,  who,  physically,  morally,  and  mentally,  are, 
and  whose  conception  and  way  of  life,  is,  so  very  dif- 
ferent. .  .  ." 

The  wall  between  the  Jewish  minorities  and  the 
citizens  of  the  countries  they  inhabit;  the  complexity, 
social  and  economic,  of  the  whole  problem  as  it  exists 
in  Poland,  and  to  a  less  extent,  in  such  neighborhoods 


230         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

as  Lithuania,  is  little  understood  in  the  West,  where 
Jewish  immigration  has  been  at  least  roughly  assimi- 
lated. Most  foreigners,  after  visiting  these  countries, 
find  their  original  preconceptions  a  good  deal  modified. 
It  is  not  a  mere  matter  of  deviltry  and  pogroms,  but 
a  problem  comparable  in  difficulty  with  that  of  our 
own  negroes  or  of  the  Irish  in  Ireland. 


CHAPTER  X 

IN  THE  REAL  LITHUANIA 

THE  Prime  Minister  was  a  country-doctor  from  the 
little  town  of  Mariampole,  in  southwest  Lithuania — 
a  tall,  arrow-straight,  aquiline  man  of  middle  years, 
with  an  "Old  Hickory"  suggestion  in  his  bearing  and 
slightly  sardonic  humour,  and  a  wisdom  that  came 
from  supplementing  his  professional  observations  of 
the  human  animal  with  adventures  into  the  somewhat 
more  abstract  regions  of  practical  politics. 

It  was  after  a  week  of  shabby  old  Kovno ;  its  noisy 
cobbles,  smelly  drains,  fly-specked  pastry-shops  and 
curious  post-Russian  mixture  of  aspiring  Lithuanian 
nationalists  and  scracely  less  aspirational  Jews,  that 
Dr.  Grenius  took  me  down  to  Mariampole  for  a 
breath  of  the  country  and  a  glimpse  of  the  "real" 
Lithuania. 

Along  with  the  War  Minister,  in  a  big  military  car 
apparently  left  over  from  the  German  occupation, 
we  whizzed  for  an  hour  or  two  between  comfortable 
fields  and  unpainted,  weather-worn  gray  cottages  with 
nothing  much  to  mark  the  land  as  Lithuanian,  except 
the  tall,  wooden  crosses,  turned  gray-black  by  rain  and 
wind,  each  with  its  crucifix  at  the  crossing  of  the  arms, 
rising  at  frequent  intervals  along  the  road.  Once  we 
passed  a  funeral  procession — priests  at  the  head  with 
holy  banners,  family  and  friends  trailing  behind  in  the 
ilust,  singing  as  they  walked. 

231 


232         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

Beside  a  bit  of  forest,  full  of  huckleberries  and  the 
wood  strawberries  which  the  peasant  women  were 
bringing  in  to  Kovno  by  the  basket-full  every  morning, 
we  stopped  to  mend  a  tire,  and  as  the  repairs  went 
slowly,  finally  strolled  across  the  fields  to  gossip  with 
a  peasant  family  and  see  what  might  be  found  for 
lunch.  The  family  of  husband,  wife  and  two  chil- 
dren, owned  their  fifteen  acres,  and  with  a  horse,  a  few 
sheep,  cow  and  chickens,  contrived  to  make  a  living. 
Their  log  house  was  characteristic  of  the  poorer  sort 
of  peasant  cottages — a  combined  entry  and  store-room 
led  into  its  one  common  room,  into  which  was  crowded 
the  brick-and-plaster  stove  and  oven,  beds,  table  and 
chairs,  a  spinning  wheel,  and  a  loom  on  which  was 
stretched  a  bolt  of  half-finished  linen. 

While  the  Minister  chatted  with  the  husband,  the 
wife  wiped  off  a  table  outside  the  house,  some  plates 
and  three  wooden  spoons,  and  gave  us  the  best  she 
had — black  bread  and  a  big  crock  of  thick,  sour  milk. 
The  yaotiert  of  Turkey;  the  prostokvasha  of  Russia; 
the  fit  of  Finland;  this  klabber  is  one  of  the  standard 
articles  of  diet  all  over  this  part  of  Europe,  and  very 
good  food  it  is  too,  and  will,  as  every  follower  of  Dr, 
Metchnikoff  well  knows,  make  you  live  to  be  a  thou- 
sand years  old.  With  the  latent  satisfaction  which  this 
thought  gives,  we  gripped  our  porringers  and  lapped 
up  our  quart  or  two  apiece  and  resumed  our  journey 
toward  Mariampole. 

Its  church  tower  showed  presently  above  the  trees, 
and  we  drummed  down  a  long  main  street,  lined,  as 
most  such  village  streets  in  Lithuania  are,  with  shops 
bearing  Jewish  names,  to  find  the  village  guard  drawn 


MARKET  ON  THE  QUAY  AT  HELSINGFORS  {Chapter  /] 


PEASANTS  COMING  FROM  CHURCH  AT  MARIAMPOLE 


IN  THE  REAL  LITHUANIA  233 

up  to  receive  their  distinguished  fellow  townsman.  The 
guard  presented  arms,  the  Doctor  saluted,  the  Jewish 
merchants  looked  on  with  that  curious  detached  air 
of  theirs,  and  we  drove  on  toward  the  big  white  church 
in  the  trees,  and  the  little,  low,  vine-covered  house 
across  from  it  which  had  long  been  the  Doctor's  home 
and  office. 

A  delegation  of  black-coated  village  notables  from 
the  local  council  or  Tariba,  with  which  the  Lithu- 
anians are  taking  their  first  lessons  in  self-government, 
came  to  pay  their  respects,  and  after  meeting  them 
and  trying  without  much  success  to  talk  to  one  young 
man  who  remembered  a  few  words  of  English  from 
the  America  he  had  left  as  a  boy  of  nine  to  return 
to  the  old  country,  I  went  out  to  look  at  the  town. 

The  service  was  over,  and  not  only  Mariampole, 
but  all  the  countryside,  was  gathered  under  the  big 
lime  trees  about  the  church.  Older  men,  with  long 
pipes,  smoked  and  conversed  gravely;  sunburned  pea- 
sant girls,  their  healthy  faces  framed  in  spotless  white 
kerchiefs,  huddled  in  little  giggling  convoys,  shy  as 
birds.  One  sat  alone  on  the  grass  in  the  full  sunshine, 
hands  in  her  lap,  her  feet  straight  in  front  of  her, 
her  calm  gray  eyes,  under  wide  level  brows,  staring 
into  space.  She  had  not  stirred  when  I  happened  to 
pass  again  a  quarter  of  an  hour  later,  but  still  sat 
there,  with  that  air  of  a  cow  .in  the  meadow,  or,  if 
you  prefer,  with  something  of  the  unhurried  dignity 
of  rocks  and  trees.  The  whole  churchyard,  and  the 
place  in  front  of  it,  was  busy  as  a  picnic — only  a  few 
of  the  older  women  lingered,  more  conscious  of  their 
sins  than  the  rest,  and  kneeling  close  to  the  white- 


234        NEW!  MASTERS  OP  THE  BALTIC 

washed  wall  of  the  church,  prayed  and  told  their  beads 
there,  as  if  something  holy  and  healing  were  dis- 
engaged from  its  very  stones. 

They  were  rather  fine-looking  peasant  faces.  Some 
of  the  more  enthusiastic  Lithuanian  nationalists  make 
much  of  their  long  straight  Greek  noses,  and  certainly 
one  seemed  to  see  them  here,  and  fine  wide  brows,  and 
the  noses  often  made  with  the  forehead  a  rather  strik- 
ingly "classic"  straight  line.  I  saw  peasant  faces  of 
what  seemed  to  me  precisely  the  same  type  in  Poland 
between  Warsaw  and  Lodz,  and  whether  this  proves 
that  the  Lithuanians  are  Poles,  or  Poles  Lithuanians, 
or  proves  nothing  at  all,  I  must  leave  to  someone  wiser 
in  these  matters — good  looking  they  were,  at  any  rate. 

In  New  York,  the  winter  before,  I  had  seen  a  play 
entitled  "In  Lithuania,"  in  which  a  family  of  particu- 
larly sodden  peasants  chop  up  a  rich  traveller  guest 
with  an  axe,  only  to  learn  that  he  is  their  son  returned 
after  years  in  America.  It  was  one  of  those  adven- 
tures into  supposedly  primitive  emotions  in  which  the 
sophisticated  mind  occasionally  likes  to  indulge,  and 
the  author  evidently  took  it  for  granted  that  Lithuania 
was  a  region  so  remote  from  civilization  that  one 
was  safe  in  assuming  that  anything  might  happen 
there.  Nothing  that  I  saw  in  Mariampole  that  day, 
from  the  churchyard,  to  the  play  given  by  the  young 
folks'  literary  society  that  evening,  suggested  that  his 
realism  was  particularly  real.  The  Lithuanian  pea- 
ants  are  backward,  to  be  sure,  but  the  faces  of  those 
in  the  churchyard  that  morning,  seemed,  at  any  rate, 
to  fit  less  with  the  play  than  with  the  tales  of  Lithu- 
ania's heroic  past,  and  it  was  not  impossible  to  imagine 


IN  THE  REAL  LITHUANIA  235 

that  the  preoccupied  young  woman  on  the  grass  was 
humming  over  one  of  the  old  Dainos,  the  poems  in 
which  the  earlier  Lithuanians  used  to  tell  of  the  loves 
of  their  pagan  Gods  and  of  themselves.  One  of  them 
according  to  a  French  translation,  goes  like  this : 

"The  Moon,  in  the  month  of  dreams,  wedded  the  Sun, 
whom  she,  faithless  one,  quitted  after  his  splendid  rising. 

"Strolling  along  alone,  she  met  a  beautiful  Star,  and  he 
became  her  lover. 

"But  Perkunas,  seeing  them,  with  one  stroke  of  his  sword 
cleft  the  star  in  twain,  and  threw  him  out  of  the  heavens. 

"Why,  O  faithless  Moon,  did  you  deceive  the  Sun,  only 
to  win  a  Star.  .  .  .  She  went  on  her  way,  sad  and 
alone.  .  .  ." 

I  left  the  church  and  walked  down  along  the  river. 
It  was  precisely  the  sort  of  river  that  such  a  village 
ought  to  have — big  enough  to  swim  and  wash  clothes 
in,  not  so  big  but  that  the  ducks  could  float  easily  from 
bank  to  bank,  and  the  little  girls,  by  wrapping  their 
one-piece  slips  about  their  shoulders,  or  taking  them 
off  altogether  and  carrying  them  on  top  of  their  heads, 
could  wade  across.  Half  a  dozen  of  them  were, 
indeed,  so  doing,  scrambling  into  and  out  of  their 
dresses,  screaming  and  laughing,  as  they  followed 
each  other  over  in  single  file  and  then  turned  round 
and  came  back  again.  A  bit  further  along  a  young 
soldier  and  two  peasant  girls  were  sunning  themselves 
on  the  close-cropped  grass  by  the  edge  of  the  water. 
The  boy  and  one  of  the  young  women  took  turns 
flinging  themselves  over,  after  the  fashion  of  puppies 
at  play;  the  other  young  woman,  with  well-mannered 
indifference,  sat  calmly  at  her  sister's  side,  watching 
the  water.  The  tall  green  rye  came  down  on  the  other 


236         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

side  of  the  stream  almost  to  the  water's  edge,  and 
above  it,  on  the  shoulder  of  the  low  ridge,  two  Dutch 
windmills  were  slowly  turning.  .  .  . 

The  Doctor,  meanwhile,  had  been  receiving  all  sorts 
of  people,  including  several  who  couldn't  get  over  the 
habit  of  thinking  of  him  as  their  physician  instead  of 
Prime  Minister,  and  when  I  got  back  to  the  house 
one  of  these  callers  was  laying  down  the  law  with 
particular  emphasis.  He  was  the  son,  it  appeared,  of 
a  Lithuanian  who  had  been  sent  to  Siberia  sixty  years 
ago  by  the  Russian  Government.  The  father's  farm 
had  been  confiscated  and  turned  over  to  a  Russian 
colonist.  The  son  now  wished  the  Lithuanian  Govern- 
ment to  take  the  farm  away  from  the  son  of  this 
colonist  and  give  it  back  to  him.  He  had  written  al- 
ready to  the  Ministry  in  Kovno,  demanding  that  his- 
torical justice  be  done,  and  received  no  reply,  and  he 
now  very  emphatically  wanted  to  know  how  about  it. 

It  was  characteristic  of  the  land  hungry  wrangles 
going  on  all  over  eastern  Europe.  And  in  so  far  as 
it  showed  that  there  was  genuine  land  hunger,  it 
should  have  encouraged  the  Prime  Minister,  for  it 
is  on  this  foundation,  and  the  land  that  may  easily 
be  made  available  to  satisfy  it,  that  the  solid  future 
of  Lithuania  must  be  built.  If  the  peasants  in  Mariam- 
pole  churchyard  seemed  good  stock  for  such  building 
the  intelligentsia  in  Kovno  suggested  what  this  stock 
might  grow  into  if  it  had  a  chance,  and  taken  together 
they  left  one  not  without  reason  for  confidence  in 
the  ability  of  the  Lithuanians  to  govern  themselves. 

The  peculiar  difficulties  in  the  way  of  Lithuania's 


IN  THE  REAL  LITHUANIA  237 

permanent  independence — her  position  squarely  be- 
tween Russia  and  Germany,  and  the  active  opposition 
of  the  Poles — are  impressed  on  the  traveller  who  con- 
tinues his  journey  southward  into  Poland  itself.  Ag- 
gressive nationalists  of  the  type  of  Ramon  Dmovski, 
the  organizer  of  the  conservative  Polish  National 
Democratic  Party,  simply  brush  the  suggestion  aside. 
Lithuania,  they  say,  if  left  to  herself,  must  inevitably 
drift  under  Russian  or  German  influence.  For  the 
safety  of  Poland  she  should  be  included  within  the 
Polish  customs'  frontier  with  a  good  deal  of  home 
rule.  I  spoke  to  Mr.  Dmovski  of  the  Lithuanians' 
fear  of  being  overshadowed  and  absorbed  in  a  federa- 
tion; of  being  drawn  into  military  adventures  in  which 
they  were  not  interested;  of  their  notion  that  their 
rich  little  agricultural  country,  with  its  population 
of  comparatively  hard-headed  peasants,  might  do  bet- 
ter economically  alone;  and  I  mentioned  the  returned 
Lithuanian-Americans  and  their  enthusiasm  and  belief. 
Dmovski  nodded  rapidly. 

"Certainly,  certainly!"  he  agreed.  "They  are  all 
those  young  men  who  have  gone  to  Russian  universi- 
ties—  (he  might  have  been  thinking  of  Dr.  Smetona) 
—and  learned  to  hate  Poland.  You'll  find  that  they 
all  speak  Polish.  Let  me  ship  500  people  out  of 
Lithuania  and  the  national  movement  would  disap- 
pear"— he  snapped  his  fingers  sharply — "like  that!  I 
assure  you — 500  would  be  quite  enough !" 

Pilsudski,  Poland's  Chief  of  State,  whom  the  ner- 
vous, "realistic"  Dmovski,  described  as  "a  medieval 
figure — quite  of  the  Middle  Ages !"  meaning  by  that, 
I  presume,  that  the  Polish  hero  had  qualities  of  the 


238         NEW  MASTERS  OF  THE  BALTIC 

old  time  barbarian  chieftain,  rather  than  of  the  mat- 
ter-of-fact, modern  man  of  affairs,  also  feared  that 
Lithuania  could  not  be  completely  independent,  but  in 
his  case  Polish  nationalism  was  tempered  by  attach- 
ment for  the  land  of  his  birth.  For  Pilsudski,  like 
many  other  influential  Poles,  comes  from  Lithuania 
and  is  of  Lithuanian  descent.  His  position  is  some- 
what like  that  in  which  Mr.  Lloyd  George  would  be 
were  Wales  trying  to  assert  its  independence  of  Great 
Britain.  His  bushy  brows  knitted  and  he  became  ex- 
ceedingly grave,  when  I  asked  him,  during  a  chat  in 
Warsaw,  what  was  to  become  of  Lithuania. 

"I  am  so  fond  of  my  native  land.  It  is," — he  hesi- 
tated, smiled,  and  opened  his  hands  with  a  gesture  of 
helplessness — "a  weakness  of  mine!"  (You  would 
have  had  to  sit  in  that  vast  room  in  the  Belvidere  Pal- 
ace, and  seen  the  adjutant  coming  in  from  time  to  time 
to  whack  his  heels  and  salute  with  the  air  of  one  ad- 
dressing Jove  himself,  to  have  caught  the  precisely 
delightful  flavour  of  that  deprecating  "Jest  mon 
faiblessef")  "I  have  such  a  profound  feeling  for  my 
own  country  that  it  is  hard  to  discuss  a  problem  so  diffi- 
cult and  painful.  A  federation  would  be  the  natural 
solution.  But  the  Lithuanians  do  not  want  that.  You 
can  not  make  them  want  it.  Alone  they  have  not  the 
strength  permanently  to  resist  Russia  or  Germany. 
Yet  we  must  protect  ourselves  and  prevent  Lithuania 
from  falling  under  the  influence  of  one  or  the  other. 
It  is  very  difficult,  indeed." 

I  suggested  a  resemblance  between  the  situation  here 
and  that  which  used  to  exist  between  Russia  and  Fin- 
land before  the  war. 


IN  THE  REAL  LITHUANIA  239 

"No,  it  is  very  different.  The  Finns  had  for  a  long 
time  lived  a  practically  separate  life.  I  never  saw  a 
Finn  who  was  not  thoroughly  Finnish,  who  was  Rus- 
sianized, I  mean.  The  Lithuanians  have  not  lived 
in  modern  times  such  a  separate  life.  Wherever  they 
are  they  quickly  become  nationalized.  Now  I  was 
born  in  Lithuania.  I  do  not  think  of  myself  as  Polish 
in  blood.  My  temperament  is  different,  my  very  face 
is  different.  But  in  culture,  I  am  Polish.  The  great 
Polish  poet,  Miczkiewicz,  the  great  Kosciusko,  were 
both  Lithuanians." 

Pilsudski  spoke  of  the  long  and  friendly  federation 
between  Poland  and  Lithuania.  "I  never  even  heard 
Lithuanian  until  I  visited  the  estate  of  a  relative  of 
ours.  It  was  not  spoken  on  our  place  at  all."  He 
soliloquized  for  a  moment  on  the  mystery  of  patriot- 
ism. "Why,  when  I  was  young  I  was  actually  ill  if 
I  could  not  get  back  to  my  country  after  a  year  away. 
I  loved  it  so,  I  was  sick  for  it.  Those  things  are  or- 
ganic. They  cannot  be  explained.  ...  It  is  very  dif- 
ficult, indeed!" 

There,  for  the  moment,  we  left  it.  And  with  the 
future  of  Russia  and  of  Poland,  not  to  speak  of  Ger- 
many, still  so  vague,  there,  for  the  moment,  it  possibly 
may  be  left.  If,  however,  the  Lithuanian  nationalists 
have  a  harder  rowvto  hoe  than  some  of  their  neigh- 
bors, they  have  at  least  emerged  from  political  ob- 
livion. They  have  asserted  their  separate  language 
and  shown  their  determination  to  govern  themselves, 
and  these  facts  must  play  their  part  in  the  final  settle- 
ment. 


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